Holography in education and popular science: A new versatile and vibrationless color device

Abstract

Following the success of the pedagogic tool for monochromatic holography realized for popular science purposes a few years ago (Voslion and Escarguel 2012 Eur. J. Phys. 33 1803), an upgrade has been developed. The resulting device includes all the necessary equipment to produce far more spectacular 4″ ×5″ color holograms for science outreach purposes. Graduate schools are also offered several experiments such as holographic diffraction gratings. Optimized to be extremely robust to vibrations, particularly by using the weight of the object to avoid unwanted vibrations during hologram exposure, the robustness of this device is demonstrated through optical microscopy measurements.