🔁 Review the Concepts
This project uses all three of light’s tricks. Skim whichever one matches the device you’re leaning toward.
🧭 Plot Summary
You’ve spent three lessons learning how light bounces, bends, and focuses. Now you have to make something that works. Your choices are a periscope to see over a wall, a magnifier to enlarge fine detail, or a simple telescope to bring a far-off scene closer.
Building it is only half the job. The other half is proving it. Before you cut anything, you’ll write a spec with numbers, measure your own lenses and mirrors, and predict what your device should do. After you build it, you’ll measure what it really does, compare the two, and show it working in a short demo. A device that “looks about right” doesn’t count. A device with a measured magnification, and an honest percent error, does.
What you will do in this project
- Choose to build a periscope, a magnifier, or a simple telescope, and write down exactly what it has to do, with numbers.
- Measure your own lenses and mirrors, because the labels and your assumptions can’t be trusted.
- Predict your device’s performance by calculation before you test it.
- Build it, align it, and measure what it really does, such as its magnification or how well its mirrors line up.
- Show it working in a short demo, and report your percent error honestly.
Why it matters
Real optical instruments are built the way you’ll build this one: choose a spec, calculate a design, build it, and measure it against the spec. It’s also the rehearsal for Problem 6-2-1, where you’ll design a vision aid on paper and have to defend why it meets a need.
✅ Self-Check Before You Roll On
Check off each item as you get there. These are not grades — they are your own signal.