Last time we in the laboratory of optoelectronic devices. ITMO University Optics Museum - its exhibits and installations - is the topic of today's story.
Attention: there are a lot of photos under the cut.
The museum was not built right away
is the first interactive museum . is he in a building on Vasilyevsky Island, where the State Optical Institute was previously located. History of the Museum in 2007, when the buildings on the Birzhevaya line were being restored. The university staff faced the question: what to place in the premises on the first floors.
At that time, the direction edutainment ΠΈ , a professor at the Faculty of Physics and Technology, suggested that Rector Vladimir Vasiliev create an exhibition that would show children that optics is interesting. Initially, the museum helped the University solve the issue of career guidance and attracted schoolchildren to specialized faculties. At first, only group excursions were conducted by appointment, mainly for grades 8β11.
Later, the museum team decided to organize a large popular science exhibition Magic of Light for everyone. It was first opened in 2015 on an area of ββmore than a thousand square meters. meters.
Museum exposition: informative and historical
The first part of the exposition introduces visitors to the history of optics and tells about the development of modern holographic technologies. Holography is a technology that allows you to reproduce three-dimensional images of various objects. At the exposition, you can watch a short educational film that tells about the physical essence of the phenomenon.
The first thing that visitors see is two tables on which layouts of the hologram recording scheme are located. As examples, a miniature of the monument to Peter I on a horse and a matryoshka are chosen.
With green laser - classic , with which scientists obtained the first transmissive volume hologram in 1962.
With a red laser - a scheme of the Russian scientist Yuri Nikolayevich Denisyuk. No laser is required to view such holograms. They are visible in normal white light. A significant part of the exhibition is devoted to the holographic part. After all, it was in this building that Yu. N. Denisyuk made his discovery and assembled his first installation for recording holograms.
Today Denisyuk's scheme is used all over the world. With its help, analog holograms are recorded that are indistinguishable from real objects - βoptoclonesβ. Boxes with the famous Easter eggs of Carl Faberge and the treasures of the Diamond Fund.
In the photo: holographic copies of "","» and decorations «»
In addition to analog holograms, our museum also has digital holograms. They are created using 3D modeling programs and laser technology. Based on photographs of the object or video (which can be made using drones), its model is being worked out on the computer. Then, it is converted into an interference pattern and transferred to a polymer film using a laser.
Such holograms are printed using special holoprinters using blue, red and green lasers (a little about their work is ).
Among the digital holograms of the museum, created by the University team, one can note the models of the Alexander Nevsky Lavra and the Naval Cathedral in Kronstadt.
Digital holograms are also four-angle - they consist of four different pictures. If you walk around such a hologram, the images will begin to change.
So far, this method of recording holograms has not found wide application due to the cost of printing equipment. There are no holoprinters in Russia, so our Museum presents holograms of American and Latvian production, for example, a map of Mount Athos.
In the photo: Map of Mount Athos
The second hall of the museum is also partly dedicated to holography. Its general appearance is in the photo below.
In the photo: Hall with holograms
This room presents a "holographic portrait" of Alexander Sergeevich Pushkin. This is one of the largest holograms on glass, and in terms of its scale it is the leader among analog holograms.
A stand with a holographic portrait of Yu.N. Denisyuk with a story about the life of a scientist and his discovery. There is a hologram with frames of the poster for the film "I Am Legend".
This hall contains holograms of objects from various museums around the world, for example from the Russian Museum of Ethnography.
To the left of the bust of Pushkin is a lamp placed in a transparent case. Although this exhibit seems like a lamp only at first glance. Inside it is an impeller with white and black blades. If you turn on the spotlight and shine on the impeller, it will begin to rotate.
The exhibit is called the Crookes Radiometer.
Each of the four lobes has a dark side and a light side. Dark - heats up more than light (due to the characteristics of light absorption). Therefore, the molecules of the gas in the flask bounce off the dark side of the blade at a higher speed than from the light side. Because of this, the blade, turned to the light source by the dark side, receives more momentum.
The second part of the hall is devoted to the history of optics: the development of photography and the invention of glasses, the history of the appearance of mirrors and lamps.
On the stands you can find a large number of various optical instruments: microscopes,β, vintage cameras and antique glasses. During the tour, you can learn the history of the appearance of the first mirrors made of obsidian, bronze and, finally, glass. The showcase contains a real Venetian convex mirror, created using the technology of the XNUMXth century. And a bronze βmagic mirrorβ (if you point it at the sun, and the reflected βbunnyβ at a white wall, then an image from the back of the mirror will appear on it).
In the same hall there is a collection of cameras. The exposition provides an opportunity to follow their development from - the progenitor of the camera - to the present.
In the photo: Collection of cameras
The showcases housed cameras with folding fur and copies of the Pontiac MFAP, produced from 1941 to 1948, and the AGFA BILLY from 1928. Among the presented devices you can find ""- the first Soviet large-scale camera, created on the basis of the most successful Western models. It was produced in the USSR until 1941.
In the photo: Folding camera "Β»
If you go to the next hall of the museum, you can see a monumental light and music organ in it. "Instrument" consists of 144 special optical glasses of different grades and brands - . There is no such collection anywhere in the world in terms of the size of glass blocks and the completeness of the presentation. It began to be collected back in the USSR in order to perpetuate the achievement of scientists from the State Optical Institute, who developed the technology for the production of radiation-resistant glass.
Now under each bar of glass there is an LED ruler. These rulers are controlled by controllers and a hub connected to a personal computer. If you play a melody on a PC, the organ will begin to flicker in different colors depending on the key and pitch. The program contains eight algorithms for converting sound into color. You can evaluate the performance of the system in this .
Continuation of the exposition: interactive part
The collection of optical glass is followed by the second part of the exposition - interactive. Most of the exhibits here can and should be touched. The interactive part begins with a study of the history of the development of cinematography and 3D vision.
, , phonotropes - give an idea of ββhow scientists studied the mechanisms of vision and information processing. You can see an example of a phonotope in the photo below. The principle of operation is based on the inertia of vision. What we do not see with the eye, since the picture is blurred, is clearly visible through the smartphone camera.
In the photo: phonotrope - a modern analogue of the zootrope
In the photo: Optical illusion
Modern 3D cinema is rooted in the 3th century - a stereoscope with pre-revolutionary cards helps to make sure of this. A XNUMXD screen is also installed there, which does not require special glasses to view the image.
In the photo: an old stereoscope from 1901
In the exhibition hall there is a table with stationery rulers and other transparent objects. If you look at them through special filters, they will bloom with all the colors of the rainbow. This phenomenon is called .
This is an effect when, under the influence of mechanical stresses, bodies acquire a double refraction (due to a different refractive index for light). Therefore, rainbow patterns appear. This method, by the way, checks the load in the construction of bridges and implants.
In the photo below - another white glowing screen. If you look at it through special filters, an image of a colored dragon will appear on it.
ITMO University often implements joint projects with artists who exhibit their work in the museum. For example, in one of the interactive halls, an LED installation "β (Wave) is the result of a βcollaborationβ between university specialists and the Sonicology project team. The media artist and composer Taras Mashtalir became the ideologist of the project creation.
The Wave art object is a two-meter sculpture that, using motion sensors, βreadsβ the behavior of the audience and generates light and musical reactions.
In the photo: Wave LED installation
Mirror illusions are collected in the next hall of the exposition. Anamorphoses "decipher" strange images and turn them into understandable images.
Next is a dark room that has plasma lights. They can be touched.
On the wall to the right of the lamps, you can draw with a flashlight; a special coating has been applied to it. And the wall opposite, the light does not absorb, but reflects. If you take a picture against its background with a flash, then on the camera screen we get only a shadow.
The penultimate hall of the exposition is the ultraviolet room. It is dark inside and filled with a lot of luminescent objects. For example, there is a "glowing" map of Russia.
In the photo: Map of Russia drawn with fluorescent paints
The last exhibit is "Magic Forest". This is a mirror hall with luminescent threads.
In the photo: "Magic Forest"
"To infinity and beyond"
Every day, museum staff work on new exhibits and improve existing ones. Tours start every twenty minutes. A series of master classes for schoolchildren also allows you to master the school course in optics in an exciting and understandable format.
In the future, we plan to increase the number of interactive art objects in the museum, as well as hold more lectures and workshops at its base. There will also be a VR zone with the developments of the ITMO University project "Β».
We hope that there will be more such interactive educational projects, and the ITMO University Museum of Optics will become an exhibition center for media artists from all over the world.
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Source: habr.com