Tag Archives: light

Chapter 28 Lab #76: Purpose: To investigate the mechanism that causes light to scatter.

Additional products to help expand on the properties of light.

In this activity, students will investigate the splitting of a light beam that occurs when the beam passes through a diffraction grating. You will determine the role of wavelength and line spacing in the resulting pattern. When light passes through a pair of thin slits, an interference pattern reveals the wave nature of light. A diffraction grating is a film with thousands of slits. Light waves passing through a diffraction grating also produce an interference pattern. The geometry of the pattern depends on the spacing of the slits and the wavelength of the light.

Purpose
In this activity, students will observe the wave nature of light as it passes through a single, narrow slit. Then they'll observe the effect of light passing through many narrow slits.
Discussion
We are accustomed to light traveling in straight-line paths. We don’t expect light to bend around corners or to spread out after passing through small [...]

PurposeIn this activity, students will investigate the behavior of light as it passes from one transparent material to another.
Discussion
When light passes from one transparent material to another, it undergoes refraction. If the light crosses the boundary between the materials at an angle, the light changes direction. In this activity, you will see how the direction [...]

Purpose
In this activity, students will investigate the minimum size mirror required for you to see a full image of yourself.
Discussion
Why do shoe stores and clothier shops have full-length mirrors? Need a mirror be as tall and wide as you for you to see a complete image of yourself?
Required Equipment
Large mirror, preferably full length, ruler and [...]

Purpose
In this activity, students will estimate the diameter of the sun.
Discussion
Take notice of the round spots of light on the shady ground beneath trees. These are sunballs—images of the sun. They are cast by openings between leaves in the trees that act as pinholes. The diameter of a sunball depends on its distance from the [...]

Purpose
In this activity, students will investigate the operation of a pinhole “lens” and compare it to the eye.
Discussion
The image cast through a pinhole in a pinhole camera has the property of being in clear focus at any distance from the pinhole. That’s because the tininess of the pinhole does not allow overlapping of light rays [...]

You may not be aware of it, but polarized light is all around you. Do you have an LCD flat screen television, a laptop computer, a calculator, or other liquid crystal display? Well then, you have been exposed to polarized light. Light reflected from non-metallic surfaces such as water, a polished table top, and glass is also partially polarized as is the light scattered by the earth’s atmosphere.

Shadows are ubiquitous, but often go unnoticed. Shadows are important historically, for they provided early evidence that light travels in straight lines. Humans constantly, but unconsciously, use shadows to judge the shape of objects in their environment. Because shadows reveal much about an object’s extension in space, they are often used to heighten the illusion of depth in a painting.