Paradoxically this is an area of darkness and shade. The absence of natural light sources provides ideal conditions for exploring the properties and essential nature of light. Designed in the cartoon noir style, the LightZone it is the only gallery in the Copernicus Science Centre that follows a narrative thread. Here we become part of a fictional world where the characters of a detective story – a police inspector and the evil-doer he is chasing – serve as our guides to the exhibits. We will see how this mysterious criminal wants to seize control of the city and so commits a series of crimes using his ingenious mind and advanced knowledge. Unexpectedly, however, his plans are foiled by the police inspector, an excellent physicist who uses scientific methods of investigation…

Visualizations of the LightZone

The LightZone draws us into this crime story and we become the detective's assistants. We help track down the criminal by performing scientific experiments with nearly 40 interactive devices, exploring geometric and wave optics, phenomena caused by radiation with various wavelengths, modern optic technologies, and visual perception phenomena.

WE WILL STAY ON THE CRIMINAL'S TRAIL THROUGH:

1. PAINTING ANALYSIS: The main theme of this exhibit is discovering how the secrets of a painter may lie hidden beneath layers of paint. Using a state-of-the-art camera and special ultraviolet and infrared sensors, we can not only identify different painting techniques and types of paints, but also discover forgeries and solve a forgery-related crime mystery.

2. LIGHT BILLIARDS: This is the favourite game of both the criminal and the police inspector. A one-of-a-kind opportunity to play a game on a real pool table using a ray of light! Instead of billiard balls, on the table we will find prisms, lenses, mirrors, and other more advanced optical devices. The object of the game is to lead this ray of light across the table and into the right pocket.

3. THE CRIMINAL'S HIDEOUT: Here we explore a labyrinth of strange corridors and rooms. The floors are tilted, the walls crooked, sometimes the floor ends up on the ceiling or a lamp ends up hanging from the floor. We experience problems with our balance triggered by misleading visual stimuli (the vertigo effect), when our senses of vision and balance receive contradictory signals. The impression of the floor swaying beneath us is so strong that one has to grab the barriers and banisters to move forward.

4. EAVESDROPPING WITH LIGHT: Here we will experiment with the kind of state-of-the-art eavesdropping gear utilized by intelligence services and the police. This device shines a laser beam on a pane of glass, behind which a conversation is underway. Advanced signal processing enables the vibrations of the glass, registered by flashes of the laser, to be reinterpreted back into sound. That enables us to listen in on the conversation and stalk the criminal.

This exhibition is in the implementation stage. Some of the exhibits (around 20), the spatial arrangement of the gallery, the décor and graphic elements are being designed and assembled by the industry-leading German company Hüttinger. The remaining exhibits (around 20) are being produced by the Copernicus Science Centre itself. Visitors will be able to experiment in the LightZone starting in the half of 2010, when the first module of the Centre building is launched (also including the On the Move, Humans and the Environment, Roots of Civilization galleries plus the Younglings exhibition). The second module with the Young Adult Gallery will be open to the public in the end of 2010.