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Teleidoscope

A mixed bag of tricks

A teleidoscope is part telescope, part kaleidoscope. Like a kaleidoscope, a teleidoscope uses mirrors to fracture images into a pattern of colorful shapes arranged in radial designs. But unlike kaleidoscopes, which use an enclosed end filled with colorful beads, a teleidoscope uses a clear sphere or lens, so that anything at which a teleidoscope is pointed returns a kaleidoscopic image.

How teleidoscopes work

The inside of a teleidoscope is simple enough that anyone with a little time and patience could create one. Inside the teleidoscope tube are mirrors. These mirrors can be arranged in many different ways, and some complex teleidoscopes even use multiple scopes and mirror systems.

However, the typical mirror arrangement in a teleidoscope uses three equilateral rectangular mirrors. These mirrors are arranged in a triangular form with the reflective surfaces on the inside of the triangle. When a viewed object strikes the mirrors, they transform it into a kaleidoscopic image.

The difference between kaleidoscopes and teleidoscopes

The fun of using a teleidoscope is that theres no limit to the images you can create. Any household item can be viewed through the tube, or you can take a teleidoscope out on a nature walk to get a uniquely geometrical vision of the world.

The end of a teleidoscope is usually a sphere or a lens, but a popular trick is to attach a clear marble to the lens. The marble modifies the reflected images even further without changing their natural color. Another way to experiment with a teleidoscope is to hold up differently colored marbles at its end and see how they change the view.

Light is important for a teleidoscope to be effective, so its not the best toy for using at night. But if it happens to be an especially starry evening, using a teleidoscope to look at the stars is a unique astronomical pleasure.