Hamza is looking at and through lenses today on his quest for a perfect pair of glasses. He wants glasses that will let him see all the way to Mars as well as see microscopic stuff. To find out how lenses work, the gang will read a secret message, go inside a camera, get close to an upside-down dinosaur, and talk to a very fancy krill. Amidst all the excitement, Koolkatt’s having trouble squeezing in a katnap.

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INVESTIGATION/HANDS-ON: Han Ru and Stefano find lenses in the strangest placesàeyeballs, a cell phone; even a bottle of water acts as a lens. Later, they meet Nicolas, a professional photographer who shows Han Ru and Stefano how a pinhole camera works. The pinhole camera is based on one of the first types of cameras, the camera obscura, which flips the image upside down (or, as we say in math terms, a half turn.) CHALLENGE: Hamza challenges two teams of kids to make their own telescopes, but they’d better be good! Each team will compete to read three words in the distance that create a secret message. BRAIN BENDER: Taya and Andrew train to become super secret spies in this brain bender. Andrew writes a secret word using a mirror to make the letters appear reversed. Can Taya guess what the word is by looking at the paper only? Everything looks backwards! EDUCATIONAL TAKE AWAY: A lens is a piece of transparent material that transmits and bends ("refracts") light. Different shaped lenses bend light in different ways. Some lenses also turn images upside down!.