When you use this hands-on exhibit…you’ll see a toy robot which seems to float in mid-air. If you try to pick up the robot with your fingers, you’ll realise that you’re grasping at air, because the robot is just a reflective or mirage hologram.
Despite knowing it’s a mirage, your brain keeps seeing the robot and you’ll try to pick up the robot again, and again, and again…
Magicians and special effect artists often take advantage of the way mirrors or sheets of clear glass reflect light, to give the illusion of something floating in mid-air.
This exhibit uses two curved mirror surfaces or Mirage® technology to create a three-dimensional hologram of the toy robot, floating in mid-air.
The robot hologram is a real image or reflective hologram, rather than a laser hologram.
Light hits the robot and reflects back and forth between the curved mirrors, so the light is directed at a focal point above an opening where it creates the illusion of a solid robot.
Your eye-brain visual system cannot tell the difference between a solid object and its reflected image, so it looks solid, even when you logically understand it is not solid at all.
A real image like the robot hologram looks three dimensional and is reversed so it faces back-to-front, unlike a reflection (or virtual image) you see in a flat mirror.