SCIENCE 8

Performance Task # 5: PHENOMENA related to LIGHT

Franczeska Lou D. Badong 8 Mars

FIRST QUARTER
Content Standard: The learner demonstrates understanding of Some Properties and Characteristics of Visible Light.
Performance Standard: The learner should be able to Discuss phenomena such as blue sky, rainbow, and red
sunset using the concept of wavelength and frequency of visible light.
Please follow this format:
Phenomena: BLUE SKY
Hypothesis: The sky is blue because it reflects the color of the sea or water in the surroundings when there
is light.
Scientific Explanation: We see the sky as blue because of the sunlight hitting the earth’s atmosphere. The earth’s
atmosphere is composed of nitrogen, oxygen and 1% of the atmosphere are small gas
particles like dust. These small air particles scatters the white light from the sun. this scattering
is called Rayleigh scattering. Rayleigh scattering is the cause of the color of the sky. The
shortest wavelengths of sunlight are scattered more than the longer ones. Thus, the air
particles also scatter the light with greater frequency more than the one with lesser frequency.
Therefore, blue light is scattered more than the other colors as its wavelength is shorter and
with greater frequency. The scattering caused by the tiny air molecules increases as the
wavelength of light decreases. With this logic, we can think that the sky must be violet but it is
not; it is because our eyes are more sensitive to blue light therefore we can see the sky as
blue.

Phenomena: RAINBOW
Hypothesis: Rainbows are formed because of the raindrops and the light that is refracted to it.

Scientific Explanation: Rainbows are formed due to the presence of water droplets in the atmosphere. When there is
a rainbow, two things happens; dispersion and total internal reflection. We know that a prism
will break a white light into 7 colors when allowed to pass through it. In a rainbow, a droplet
acts as the prism that are splitting the sunlight to its constituent colors (ROYGBIV) which we
can refer to as white light. When the white light from the sun enters the raindrop it splits into 7
colors so there is dispersion but there is more that happens to it. The total internal reflection
takes place too, because the light is travelling from a denser to rarer medium so instead of
refracting all the colors they got reflected back and now seven colors are refracted. The
hierarchy of colors of the rainbow from red to violet is from red with longer wavelength to violet
with the shortest wavelength. We know that the lower wavelength, the higher frequency of a
light wave. Another one is because the color with the least energy is at rank first while the
color wuth greatest energy is placed at the lowest part of the rainbow.

Phenomena: RED SUNSET

Hypothesis: If the sun is going down, the edge or arc of it with greater energy is what’s shown to us then
red sunsets can be seen.
Scientific Explanation: As the sun gets lower in the sky, its light is passing through more of the atmosphere to reach
us. So even more of the blue light is scattered, therefore the red and orange light with the
longer wavelength pass straight through the atmosphere and directly to our eyes before the
blue light comes to us. They say that red sky is bad because that means more dust and
pollution is there in our atmosphere causing the blue light to scatter more and the red or the
light with longer wavelength and lesser frequency goes directly to our eyes.