Cat's Eyes
Fascinating Food

Make your own cat’s eyes that ‘glow’ in the dark.

Age range – 6 and under (with adult supervision)


Ever met a cat on a dark, dark night and seen their eyes glowing in the dark? You can make your own and find out how they work


• Some cardboard
• Felt tips or crayons
• Aluminium foil
• Scissors
• Glue stick or clear sticky tape
• A torch





• Draw a 'cats head' on your piece of cardboard. Make the eyes nice and big. (Try to make them at least 1 cm across.)
• Colour it in however you like, all except the eyes. Dark colours will give better results, though!

• Cut out your cat's head by cutting all around the edge.
• Cut two circles of aluminium foil the same size as the eyes.
• Glue the foil on the eyes. If you don't have any glue you can just stick them on with clear sticky tape.

(If you find it difficult to glue the foil on, you can ask an adult to poke a pen from the back of the cardboard into the centre of each eye Ð this will make the eye rougher and it should be easier to stick the foil on.)
• Take your cat's head and your torch into the darkest place you can fit into - something like a cupboard with the door shut would be excellent.
• Sit in the dark with the cat. Don't switch the torch on yet! Can you see any part of the cat?
• Now switch the torch on. Point the light behind you and in front of you and then on the cat's head. When can you see the cat? Which part of the cat did you see first?


If your dark place was really really dark, you probably couldn’t see anything at all. If there was a little bit of light coming in from somewhere you might have been able to see the cat’s eyes, but nothing else on the cat’s head.

Then when you turned your torch on, you could see the cat’s eyes shining. When you pointed the light at the cat’s head you could see all of the cat’s head, including the shiny eyes.

You couldn’t see the cat’s eyes when it was completely dark, because the eyes don’t give out any light. So they don’t shine like the sun does or like a star does. But the torch gives out light, and the cat’s eyes reflect light, like a mirror. So when the torch was on, you could see the eyes reflecting light back at you.

If you meet a cat on a dark night and see its eyes shining at you, they are really just reflecting light back at you.

Things called ‘cat’s eyes’ are found on motorways in between the lanes the cars drive on. These reflect the light from the headlights of the cars. So if there are no cars on the motorways to shine light from their headlights, the cat’s eyes don’t shine either.


The ASE and ICI SHIPS project (School Home Investigations in Primary Science) written by Joan Solomon and Janine Lee.

You can find more information about the ASE here.

We are happy for you to try this experiment at home and to use it for educational or other non-commercial purposes. However, please note that you cannot reproduce, record, publish, modify or distribute this experiment for commercial purposes without the permission of the original publishers (the ASE).