To demonstrate the principles of human perception of depth while having fun with "DIY Holograms", the Photonic Society Outreach team worked with Wendy Ibsen from CSEP to create an activity that uses a smart phone and a folded piece of thin plastic to display floating "3D" objects from videos. While these floating objects mimic the effect of a hologram, the demonstration actually uses the Pepper's Ghost effect to trick your eyes.  

We kicked-off the 2017-2018 year by hosting this activity at 5 local schools with 8th graders and their families. 

To learn more about the "DIY Hologram" activity and how you can set up you own "holograms," you can read the activity handout and instructions. 

UCSB's CSEP group (The Center for Science and Engineering Partnerships) hosts afterschool science nights at local junior high schools every quarter via the FUSE program, run by Wendy Ibsen and created by Marilyn Garza, the 2010-2011 Teacher of the Year (SB Independent).
Families - including parents and younger children - work together on three hands-on science activities during the evening, in which each activity is 25 minutes, from various fields of science such as Chemistry, Biology or Fluid mechanics. UCSB Graduate students lead the activities, typically with 2-4 leaders in each room of up to 8 families.​

In 2016 we added a new module to the FUSE activity lineups called
​"Light-Pipes: Controlling Light", in which attendees learn how to control light and use it to send messages. Students complete the "Jello Waveguide Challenge" by cutting up gelatin blocks to get their laser to turn around 180°.​

In 2017 we created the new "Color Mixing" activity, intended to explain how a printer uses only three colors to produce every color we can see, and why those three colors are the strange "Cyan", "Magenta" and "Yellow" combinations. 
In 2018, we are leading the activity again. With the help of Amalu Shimamura and Yoko Hirokawa we have created a translation of the activity into Japanese!
​This activity is going to 4 local junior highs, led by UCSB graduate students.