Assignment 1 (Mirror Critique)

Mirror Critique

Giant Mirror

While the giant concave mirror is a great toy, I felt like it lacked depth as an exhibit.  Last week we talked about two types of exhibits, those that you come away from feeling like you’ve learned something (ex : Bright Black), and those that are designed not to teach, but to spark curiosity (ex : Magnetic Sand).  The Giant Mirror exhibit did not seem to demonstrate any tangible phenomenon for learning, but also did not spark my curiosity to experiment more with mirrors.  I think it was intriguing, but lacked an explanation for the phenomena and as a result was unable to carry that curiosity to its prime.  There are a lot of Exploratorium exhibits that demonstrate magic in the world, but in this case I found it hard to think beyond the magic about the actual quality of the mirror and how it was distinctly changing my perception.

I think this exhibit could be improved by delineating areas of intriguing perception with lines on the ground and a more clear diagram of how a curved mirror reflects.  I felt like this particular exhibit had too much magic and mystery without ample explanation.  It was a really disorienting experience which made it exciting, but hard to grasp what was actually happening as you moved closer or farther away.  A simple diagram like the one seen above that visually demonstrates why the world is flipped in a concave mirror would be very beneficial to the exhibit. 

Rotating Faces

This exhibit was quite frustrating to me at first, but I think the frustration actually made it stronger.  It poses both a challenge and a delight by allowing you to see your face spin in some folded mirrors while having others that do not move your image.  The general premise of the exhibit is that the angle at which the mirror is folded changes the number of times a reflection passes back and forth.  I came back to this exhibit twice trying to fully grasp what was happening and was delighted by the suggestion to put your finger close to the fold in the mirror and count how many times you could see your finger, then divide that number by two.  If the resulting number was odd, then your face spun, but when it was even your face did not move when you looked into the fold and spun the mirror.  This worked really well for me because it frustrated me and then gave me a hint on how to solve that frustration and reach a climax of excitement after a moment of discovery. 

I think it was particularly strong because there were three sides to the exhibit each with two spinning mirrors, one that spun and one that stayed still.  My initial hypothesis was that the image spinning depended on the size of the angle between the two faces, but as I went around to the other sides of the exhibit I realized that there was no pattern between how acute an angle was and whether it spun.  This tricked conclusion built on my yearning to solve the mystery.  The exhibit was both successful on a learning level to demonstrate an interesting mirror quality to a user, and was successful on the curiosity level because it kept me coming back and wanting to discover more.