• Question: How do particles in holograms make the human eye see them?

    Asked by Posh_Gamer_21 to Alison, Hannah, Jonny, MarthaNari, Paul on 18 Jun 2015.
    • Photo: Jonny Brooks-Bartlett

      Jonny Brooks-Bartlett answered on 18 Jun 2015:

      To see an object, light has to hit that object and then bounce off and then make contact with our eyes. Because we have two eyes our brain is able to make sense of the light and make the object look 3D. Whereas a camera has one lens and can only make 2D images.

      Holograms try to recreate what happens with our eyes. They are made by splitting a laser beam into two. Laser beams are special because every part of the laser beam travels the same way (it’s like walking with your friends and you all take the same steps at the same time). One of the split laser beams passes through the object that you want to see and the other one doesn’t go through anything. When we make the two laser beams meet again, we can see the difference between the two beams as a hologram.

    • Photo: Paul Brack

      Paul Brack answered on 24 Jun 2015:

      There are no particles in a hologram – it’s projection, a bit like when you use a projector to see a slideshow. So we see it in the same way as we see that, by the light reaching our eyes.

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