Rainbows and Sunsets

Today is light experiment day.  We followed "Hands-On Science" for ideas.  Trinity made rainbows with a beam of white light on a cd.  She enjoyed putting the light at different angles to make different colors show up more clearly. 

She then made sunset colors in a bowl.  After adding a bit of milk to water in a bowl we discussed how the fat in the milk scatters the blue and green differently than the other colors so the result is orange.

We talked about the moon having no light except for the light reflected from the sun.   We then went into a dark room and shone a light onto a tennis ball that Trinity suspended by a string.  Trinity turned around as she held it so she could see how the light on the ball changed so she could see moon shapes.

Next she made a slide projector with a cut out paper and a magnifying glass.  We discussed how lenses refract light and what objects had lenses in them.  Trinity moved her 'lense' closer and further away from her paper to see how the image formed and blurred.

We also read and discussed "Experiments with Light" by Brian Murphy.  While the kids didn't do the activities in this book, there was a lot of information in it.  They learned what light is made of, all about shadows, how to make a sundial, bending light with water, more about lenses, optical illusions and why color is so important to our world.  Trinity and Kyler both marveled at this creation.