Tuesday, May 21, 2024

A STEM Project: Camera Obscura - A Pinhole Camera

This camera obscura allows light to go through a small 1 mm pinhole opening. The light is projected on the other side of the box on a piece of vellum. The projected image is upside down. Four boxes of 65 lb. black cardstock of varying depths...1, 1 1/2, 2 and 2 1/2 inches with a pinhole are to be made.  The lid of the box is made out of vellum.

Here is the PDF.  

Here is the .Studio file.

Please check to see if the pinhole is cut properly. There might be a hanging chad that needs to be removed by poking it with a pin.  All of the pinholes are the same size in each of the boxes.

 I used a six LED bulb clip-on light as the light source.  I colored two small squares of plastic wrap.  Each plastic square covered two of the six LED bulbs.  I used a dark pink and blue permanent marker.  I did try other colors but they were too faint.  I taped the blue square to the upper portion of the light and the pink square to the lower portion of the light.  I left the middle two LED bulbs clear.
Place the boxes in a straight line and a ruler parallel to the boxes as shown above. Moving the light so that it is parallel to the largest box, I observed that the image that is portrayed in the velum has the colors reversed.  I continued to do the same for the remaining boxes. Images shown below.
2 1/2 inch depth
2 inch depth
 1 1/2 inch depth
1 inch depth

Conclusion: 

If the distance between the pinhole and velum is reduced, the size of the image will decrease and the image will become brighter since the light spreads over a small area. If the distance between the pinhole and velum is increased, the image size will increase and the image however will get less bright since the light spreads over a large areaThere were six LED bulbs in the lamp.  Only four lights were clearly visible, the other two lights were faint as they were out of range.


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