Facts On Light

Other animals can see parts of the spectrum that humans can’t. For
example, a large number of insects can see ultraviolet (UV) light.

Light travels very, very fast. The speed of light in a vacuum (an area empty of matter) is around 186,000 miles per second (300,000 kilometres per second).


Photosynthesis is a process that involves plants using energy from sunlight to convert carbon dioxide into food.

Sunlight can reach a depth of around 80 metres (262 feet) in the ocean.

 

 

 

Diffraction

Diffraction

Light can bend around edges.

Light bends when it passes around an edge or through a slit. This bending is called diffraction. You can easily demonstrate diffraction using a candle or a small bright flashlight bulb and a slit made with two pencils. The diffraction pattern, the pattern of dark and light created when light bends around an edge or edges, shows that light has wavelike properties.

• 2 clean new pencils.
• A piece of transparent tape. (Any thin tape will do.)
• A candle.

OR

• a Mini-Maglite® flashlight (available for under $15 in many hardware stores). Do not substitute other flashlights.

OR

• A flashlight bulb for a Mini-Maglite®, two AA batteries, a battery holder (available from Radio Shack), and two clip leads.
• Optional: pieces of cloth, a feather, plastic diffraction grating, a metal screen, a human hair.

(5 minutes or less) Light the candle or, if you are using a Mini-Maglite®, unscrew the top of the flashlight. The tiny lamp will come on and shine brightly. You can also make your own bright point source of light by attaching the Mini-Maglite® flashlight bulb to the battery holder with the clip leads. Be sure you put two AA batteries in the battery holder.
Wrap one layer of tape around the top of one of the pencils, just below the eraser.

(15 minutes or more) If you measure distances on the diffraction pattern, you can calculate the wavelength of light emitted by the candle or bulb.
Place the light at least one arm-length away from you.
Hold the two pencils vertically, side by side, with the erasers at the top. The tape wrapped around one pencil should keep the pencils slightly apart, forming a thin slit between them, just below the tape. Hold the pencils close to one eye (about 1 inch [2.5 cm] away) and look at the light source through the slit between the pencils. Squeeze the pencils together, making the slit smaller. Notice that there is a line of light perpendicular to the slit. While looking through the slit, rotate the pencils until they are horizontal, and notice that the line of light becomes vertical.
If you look closely you may see that the line is composed of tiny blobs of light. As you squeeze the slit together, the blobs of light grow larger and spread apart, moving away from the central light source and becoming easier to see. Notice that the blobs have blue and red edges and that the blue edges are closer to the light source.
Stretch a hair tight and hold it about 1 inch (2.5 cm) from your eye. Move the hair until it is between your eye and the light source, and notice that the light is spread into a line of blobs by the hair, just as it was by the slit. Rotate the hair and watch the line of blobs rotate.
Look at the light through a piece of cloth, a feather, a diffraction grating, or a piece of metal screen. Rotate each object while you look through it.

The black bands between the blobs of light show that there is a wave associated with the light. The light waves that go through the slit spread out, overlap, and add together, interacting in complex ways to produce the diffraction pattern that you see. Where the crest of one wave overlaps with the crest of another wave, the two waves combine to make a bigger wave, and you see a bright blob of light. Where the trough of one wave overlaps with the crest of another wave, the waves cancel one another out, and you see a dark band.
The angle at which the light bends is proportional to the wavelength of the light. Red light, for instance, has a longer wavelength than blue light, and so it bends more than blue light does. This different amount of bending gives the blobs their colored edges: blue on the inside, red on the outside.
The narrower the slit, the more the light spreads out. In fact, the angle between two adjacent dark bands in the diffraction pattern is inversely proportional to the width of the slit.
Thin objects, such as a strand of hair, also diffract light. Light that passes around the hair spreads out, overlaps, and produces a diffraction pattern. A piece of cloth or a feather, which are both made up of many smaller, thinner parts, produce complicated diffraction patterns.

In a dimly lit room, look at a Mini-Maglite® bulb with one eye (a candle will not work). Notice the lines of light radiating out from the light source, like the seeds radiating out from the center of a dandelion. Propose experiments to find the origin of these lines. For example, rotate the light source, and notice that the lines of light do not rotate. Rotate your head, and notice that the lines do rotate. Hold your hand or an index card in front of your eye so that it doesn't quite block your view of the light source. Notice that you still see a full circle of lines radiating out from the light source. The lines of light are spread out onto your retina by imperfections in the tissues of your cornea.

Speed of Light

☆ On kaleidoscopes ☆

A kaleidoscope is a cylinder with 3 rectangular mirrors plus a triangular one containing loose, colored objects such as beads or pebbles and bits of glass. When the viewer looks into one end, light entering the other creates a colorful pattern, due to the reflection off of the mirrors.

Basically, kaleidoscopes got talent.

Kaleidoscopes are meant to be scientific and mathematical (originally...) but some dude from the 1800's copied it as a toy.

Now here's the fun part~

We're going to teach you to make one! (How corny did that sound idk)

Materials:
1. The brown tube thing in the tissue paper roll or a clear cylinder tube, whichever seems more convenient
    and efficient

2. Beads and crystals of different colors

3. Three rectangular mirrors

4. Liquid glue

Steps to follow:
1. Lay the three rectangular mirrors side by side on newspaper, and apply a coat of black paint to the outer
    portion.

2. Take one more small triangular mirror and do the same to it.

3. Allow the pain to dry overnight.

4. If thoroughly dried, put the mirrors together lengthwise in the shape of a prism, with the painted sides out.

5. Loop a rubber band tightly around the prism to temporarily hold it together. Put the triangular mirror as the
    base.

6. Stretch a small piece of tape around the prism to one side of the rubber band.

7. Then, remove the rubber band and stretch two more pieces of tape, each around the ends of the prism.

8. Continue securing your kaleidoscope with strips of tape on the joints between the slides.

9. Take some crystals, beads etc. and put them inside the kaleidoscope.

10. You're more than welcome.

Light Or Darkness

So here's a racing quiz game we made!
Play it and enjoy people!
Though it's kind of hard to answer all the questions within the time limit, we couldn't do it
Can you?

Here's the link!!

http://cybertrain.info/quizman/quizmade/quizrace/quizrace.html

Links ❀

Here's a link to a YouTube video...
It helps see the difference in colors.
Enjoy...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=evQsOFQju08

The Prism Project

Is Light  White?

We probably might be thinking that color is white, but "white light" is made up of different colors.
You can also split it up with a... Prism!


A Prism is a triangular block made of glass or plastic.

So... Can light be bent?

First, light goes through air then enters water, then gets bent. Like for example, when you drop a coin into a cup of water, it appears closer to the surface than it really is. This process is called refraction.

☺☺☺This is refraction too ~




Refraction and $w4g

(We explained this in the previous video but if you haven't seen it then you're missing out on a lot... I think...) Light can also be bent in mirrors [concave and convex, check your spoons!!] so the image looks either squishier or more expanded or smaller or pinched or whatever. Use the weirdest adjectives you can find.

There's also diffraction but that involves super complicated formulae and and physics which we're not learning yet.

Gravity affects light as well, and it bends at a certain limit of gravitational pull.

Download and highlight!

So we made this word search puzzle

If you really like science and fun how about clicking the link below, printing it out and doing it!

http://www.puzzle-maker.com/cgi-bin/wswo.cgi

We'll be waiting for comments!

Y'know print it, highlight and all little Einsteins with an accountcould take a picture of it and post it in the comments.

(Doubt you will though).

This is a game we found for reflection and here is the link: http://games.erdener.org/laser.

This is a video on the anatomy of our eye created by us. The fun stuff will be coming out this weekend, so wait will ya kids?

 

How we see things

This is a very simple chart we made on how we see things.

There's a bunch of other pics but it is not due to bad photography

It is just so that if you want to read:

"What's a spectrum?"

A spectrum is a band of seven colors obtained after white light is split. This can be understood by the fact that if a white light (sunlight) is passed through a prism and allowed to fall on a white screen, the seven split colors can be seen. The arrangement of the colors are in the order: violet, indigo, blue, green, yellow, orange and red. This arranged group of colors is called a spectrum. A rainbow is an example of a natural spectrum.

If you need help remembering these colors, try using this acronym:
Violently Indicating Bad Gremlins Yelling Oh Rimming

(Oops, that was nonsensical... Haha... Sorry.)

Note

Hi, hello! This is our science project on Light, and it's not going to be bland or boring. We're going to post our videos of experiments once or twice in the duration of the 5 weeks until our deadline, (which, by the way, starts today) plus some extra information (in text). And yeah, of course there's going to be entertainment. What would studying be without any entertainment?

Peace ☮

-Ayesha, Hibbah, Jessica, Mahinsa, Martina