This summer while my family and I were in Chicago, we visited Millennium Park. One of the main attractions there is the Cloud Gate, but pretty much everyone knows it as “the bean.” The sculpture, created by artist Anish Kapoor, was inspired by a drop of mercury about to hit a surface and serves as a gate to the inside chamber. It stands about three stories high and weighs 110 tons. The bean’s seamless appearance and strategically placed curves allows its visitors to see the city through uniquely warped reflections.
As I viewed myself and the Chicago skyline in the mirror-like bean, I realized that I was staring at physics. I recognized that all of the images I was seeing were caused by light bouncing off of the bean and back to my eyes, reflection. The law of reflection states that the angle of incidence is equal to the angle of reflection. This was why depending on where I was standing around the bean (the sculpture is a combination of concave and convex mirrors, both spherical mirrors, as well as parabolic mirrors), sometimes I appeared shorter, taller, and even multiple times, like when I stand in front of fun house mirrors.
Here are some pics:
As I viewed myself and the Chicago skyline in the mirror-like bean, I realized that I was staring at physics. I recognized that all of the images I was seeing were caused by light bouncing off of the bean and back to my eyes, reflection. The law of reflection states that the angle of incidence is equal to the angle of reflection. This was why depending on where I was standing around the bean (the sculpture is a combination of concave and convex mirrors, both spherical mirrors, as well as parabolic mirrors), sometimes I appeared shorter, taller, and even multiple times, like when I stand in front of fun house mirrors.
Here are some pics:
1 comment:
that is soooo cool! i wonder how they ever made something so massive? -elissa
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