Laser Spirograph

I used stuff lying around my office to make a laser spirograph—three spinning mirrors at right angles to each other, where the speed of rotation for each can be controlled to make them spin faster than your eye can pick up on. Thus, when each mirror is slightly tilted, the light bounces three times, changing direction as it spins, and gives fun patterns displaying it’s three degrees of freedom on the wall.

 

For mine, I used a watch box I had to hold three computer fans, and just taped mirrors onto each, and wired them up to cheapo potentiometers and a 12V supply I had lying around, in order to control the spinning speed for each by adjusting the resistance/current to each motor independently.

 

Here’s what it looked like:

And here’s what it worked like:

If you want to make your own, computer fans and a laser pointer should be easy to find, the circular mirrors can be found at any craft store, and the potentiometers are about $1 each at radio shack. I used a 12V power supply because it was handy, but batteries work too.