02.11.2016
Written By: Austin Miner
Our area of focus this month was light. This week we broke up into groups of three to four students per mentor that we will maintain for the rest of the school year. We started with a quick powerpoint to go over some of the basic concepts of what light is before jumping into our five stations that the groups rotated in-between.
- Colour Wheels and Prism: This experiment used spinning colour wheels to show how combinations of colours form different ones, and, ultimately, how if you combine all colours you see white light.
- Polarizers: An important concept with light is that it is a wave. We used polarizers to help show this and demonstrate how that, depending on how you orient them relative to one another, you can manipulate the passage of light. We also showed how computer and cell phone screens are polarized.
- Index of Refraction: The fact that light travels differently through different materials can be a difficult concept to grasp. To help illustrate this concept, we performed a quick little experiment showing how light “bends” in different fluids.
- Solar Cells: At this station we had a few solar cells hooked up to a noise maker and fan. Using filters and a light source we helped the students learn that light is a form of energy.
- Glow in the Dark Plants: In this experiment we had the students create a spinach isopropanol solution that, when exposed to UV light, glowed red. This experiment got the students thinking about how plants convert light to energy.
I think today went well overall. I’m excited for next week where we plan to expand the Index of Refraction experiment and make it more open ended and experimental!