Want to create a high tech version of a flip book? Use patterns to create a hard copy of an animation.
What you need:
- a printout of a specific image – an image of an atom can be downloaded here
- a printout of the lined pattern (download here) on a transparency
What to do:
- Print out the attached images, with the lines on a transparency and the image on regular paper. You can print on transparencies at Officeworks if you don’t have your own printer.
- Place the transparency over the top of the image.
- Slowly pull the transparency along the image. What do you see?
What happens;
You should see the image move! The electrons move around the atom. This image was created specifically for this purpose. Originally various electrons were drawn, like this:
The image with the lines has the black lines five times the width of the white space. This allows six images. Each different image of electrons here is coloured differently.
Each coloured image then has the grid placed over it, and overlapping parts of the image removed, moving the grid over by one frame each time, as so. The image is then changed so everything is black.
As the grid lines are moved over the image, the black lines fill in one section allowing you to see the electrons as one position. As you move it over, you see a different frame, and then another and another, so it appears as an animation with the electrons flying around the atom.
You can also create your own image using this process. You just need some sort of image editor.
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