Table Top Laser Fountain

Project goal: To design a tabletop laser fountain to show additive color mixing in real time by using red, green and blue laser sources routed through a laminar flow water fountain. The laser light travels through the water streams as though they are optical fibers and combines in a 3-D printed bowl that demonstrates the additive color-mixing properties of light. The design uses laser diodes that are modulated using electronic driver boards to alter the amount of electrical current supplied to each laser diode. By altering the amount of electrical current, the perceived brightness of each laser changes and allows selective color mixing according to the color gamut created by the wavelengths of each laser source. Control of the color in the fountain is managed by manual slider switches that control the brightness of each laser, and via an Android app with digital sliders that send signals to a microcontroller running on an Arduino microprocessor.