Kaleidoscope

The kaleidoscope is an optical device that is commonly used as children's toys.

The kaleidoscope was originally known to the ancient Greeks, but was only rediscovered in 1816 by the Scottish physicist David Brewster in 1817 and registered as a patent. Brewster came in the course of his studies on the polarization birefringent crystals on it, as he looked at such crystals in a reflective metal tube.

Etymology

The word kaleidoscope is derived from Greek and means: see beautiful forms. Specifically, are the three words: καλός ( kalós ) "beautiful", εἴδος ( eidos ), " shape, form " and σκοπεῖν ( skopein ) " look, look, look ."

Nature

A kaleidoscope is a usually 12 to 15 cm long tube, at one end are loose between a smooth and a frosted glass plate inserted small colored objects. Often the objects body of colored glass. The other end of the kaleidoscope has a round window to look through. In the tube itself (sometimes four ) mirror strips attached, which touch at their longitudinal edges along three. This reflects the objects reflect more times, so that a symmetrical color pattern is visible which changes when turning.

There are also kaleidoscopes that hold instead of the glass plates one with a transparent liquid (usually oil) filled container in which swim a variety of items. Due to the high viscosity of the liquid, the objects slowly sink down and change the pattern continuously, must be that permanently turned without.

Another form asking open kaleidoscopes represents (also called Teleidoskop ), which instead of the glass plate with the objects have a fixed lens. If you look through this, a section of the environment is the pattern rather than changes due to rotation by horizontal and vertical movement.

Largest Kaleidoscope

The largest kaleidoscope in the world, " Erdturm " ( Japanese:大地 の 塔, daichi no tō ) was to admire during the Expo 2005 in Japan. It was a 47 meter high tower, on whose spherical ceiling was a color game with more than 40 meters in diameter. The incident in the glass dome of the tower sunlight was reflected by a complicated arrangement of mirrors after multiple redirections on three rotating glass discs. It emerged that for typical kaleidoscopes, ever-changing and merging symmetrical pattern that could be seen from the entrance hall.

Software

Kaleidoscopes can be simulated on computers via software.

Other meanings

• Diverse and varied things are often referred to metaphorically as a kaleidoscope.
• The Beatles song " Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds " is about a " girl with kaleidoscope eyes " ( "girl with kaleidoscope eyes" ).
• The British singer Joe Brooks used this metaphor in his song " Kaleidoscope".
• The literary work "Kaleidoscope of everyday life" of the Swiss Aphoristikers Charles Tschopp makes use of this metaphor, whether the variegation of human life.
• Physical principles describe the items Geometrical optics and the law of reflection.
• Name of a song of the deprotonation - punk band fleeing storms.