the infinity mirror

Lately while browsing through thinkgeek, I stumbled upon the infinite dungeon corridor. It looks cool, but they still have no affordable shipping options. That got me thinking that it should be possible to make an infinite mirror with the kids. It didn’t take long to find a recipe for how to go about it. Finding a mirror was easy, but regular window glass is a bit harder these days. The first try was with plexiglass that I had laying around. The effect was really bad, because it had a matt finish. When I asked for real glass, I got security glass. Trying to cut it to the right size, it disintegrated into a thousand tiny parts. So it was plexiglass again, this time with clear finish. I also was not sure about the window film. I bought the film that is used to taint the car windows. An LED stripe was readily available and waiting for a new purpose.

The kids were involved in all construction steps. Cutting the wood for the case, drilling, screwing, sawing, cutting the mirror, tacking the LED stripe … But one thing was entirely up to them: Usually those infinite mirrors have the two windows relatively close. But to be in the style of the dungeon corridor, I created the case with some room where the kids could paint what should look like the walls of a castle.

The effect is not as good as we would have liked it to be. I’m not sure if it is because of the plexiglass, the increased distance or the wrong type of window film. But it works, and was fun to construct. Most importantly the kids learned not just how to construct such a thing, but also about optical illusions, and how light behaves.