Magic LED Box

On Sunday I was bored, so I built a box with some LEDs and mirrors inside of it:

It has blinking LEDs on the ceiling and a couple of convex mirrors on the bottom which reflect the LEDs and make it look like there are more than there really are.

Since it's dark inside the box, the blinking LEDs distract you from noticing the water nozzle in the middle hooked up to a squeeze-ball behind the box. When I activate the squeeze-ball it squirts you in the face:

I brought it to work and had moderate success showing it to co-workers. Many were initially suspicious of the weird-looking box, but I was eventually able to prank everybody that came by (except one guy who recently had an eye operation that I decided not to squirt).

It turned into a sort of a social experiment in how to get people to stick their faces into a box. I had some interesting observations:

• People were much more suspicious if I said "hey, come look into my magic box" "what's in it?" "oh, you'll see.."
• Instead, if I waited until they walked by and asked about the box they were much more gullible, especially if I said something like "oh, do you want to see the LED light show too? ok, let me turn it on..."
• Everybody was expecting to get an electric shock when they looked in (probably because of the circuits and LEDs on the top). Nobody guessed that it would squirt water
• It's probably a good idea to ask people if they wear contacts before squirting them in the face with water (of course that would ruin the surprise in this case..)

Here's a video clip with some highlights. I got a bunch of other people too but forgot to turn on the webcam in time: