Subject: Media Topic: Animation Unit: Making a Phenakistoscope Activity from Cool Cats Cross Arts Adventures, Level 3 Purchase the book here Tools and materials card disk, pencil, ruler, scissors, mirror Preparation You can find the phenakistoscope here. Print out copies for your students. Procedure Glue the phenakistoscope sheet onto card and allow to dry. Cut the slits between the pictures (images) into the card disk. Insert a pencil or thin dowel through the centre of the disk - or pin the disk to a ruler. Hold the disk in front of a mirror, with the images toward the mirror. As the disk is spun, look through the slits. Every time a slit passes the eye it reveals a picture from the disk in the mirror. When it is spun at just the right speed, the eye catches each of the pictures in sequence, creating the illusion of motion. Past and present contexts The continuous action of a movie on screen is a clever illusion of movement. It is not one continuous image, but thousands of still pictures. Our eyes actually merge the pictures together, so that we see them as movement. The illusion of movement is animation. One of the very first films by the Lumiere Brothers showed a train pulling into a station. At the first performance, many of the audience fled in terror, convinced that the train would burst out of the screen and into the theatre. The phenakistoscope The principles behind it were first demonstrated by inventor Michael Faraday. In the 1830's the word was unpronounceable by shopkeepers, who called it a Fantascope and sold it as a toy for both children and adults. Further Reading Some great examples from Museum for the History of Sciences at the University of Ghent North Carolina School of Science and Mathematics Optical Toys Gallery A Phenakistoscope Animation, c.1840 Panelectric Living Sinema The Oldest Movies from Cinescene.com Purchase the book here Register for more free activities here