the Bare-Bones

PHYSICS LAB

LIGHT + OPTICS
a learn by doing place
n d S c i ence
a
By Art with Mr. Alex
V 4th-8th grade
WHAT IS LIGHT?
Light is one of the several forms
of energy, like heat, sound,
electricity and others. We can
see because our eyes are able to
detect the energy of light.

Heat and light often come

together. Look closely at the
picture (or a real candle if you
can). There are two places that
are very hot and making light—
what are they?

But you can also make light by

mixing chemicals or sending
electricity through a gas tube.
2.
 WHAT’S GOING ON?
Everything is made of atoms,
which all have “electrons”
e-

swirling around them.

If you add heat or mix certain

e- chemicals together or send
electricity through a gas, the
electrons get excited and move
out a little further.

But they only stay out there

e- for an instant, and then snap
back to where they were. When
they do that, they give out a
spark of light.

3.
SMOOTH SURFACES REFLECT LIGHT
A ray of light bounces off a
smooth, shiny surface just like a
marble bounces off a wall. The
angle they hit is the same angle
they bounce off at.
Υλικά:
• A marble or golf ball
• A laser pointer
• Μερικά αντικείμεναπου
γυαλίζουν– ένα καθρέφτη, ένα
λευκό πίνακα, ή ένα γυαλιστερό
θρανίο.
Roll the marble on the floor
so it bounces off a wall.
That’s what light does when it
hits a shiny surface.
Now shoot the laser at some
shiny surfaces, like a mirror,
a polished desk, or a white
board. Be very careful not to
shine it into anyone’s eyes. 4.
 AND SO DO ROUGH SURFACES
The tabletop and the walls get light
directly from the ceiling fixture,
but some bounces off the floor too.
Put a rock with rough
surfaces on the floor and roll
the marble at it several times
in the same angle but hitting
the rock in different places.
Does it always bounce the
same direction? When light
hits a surface that isn’t shiny,
it bounces off in random
directions. That’s why we can
see all around a lighted room.
Light can also bounce from
one surface to another, which
is why we can also see things
in a shadow.
5.
 Η ΔΙΑΘΛΑΣΗ ΚΑΝΕΙ ΤΟ ΦΩΣ
ΝΑ ΑΛΛΑΖΕΙ ΠΟΡΕΙΑ
The laser beam goes straight
through an empty container.
But if filled with water, the laser
beam turns going into the water,
and back again coming out.
Το φως κινείται ευθύγραμμα ,
μέσα τον αέρα, αλλά αλλάζει
κατεύθυνση όταν διέρχεται μέσα
από το νερό, και επανέχεται
στην αρχική του κατεύθυνση
όταν εξέρχεται από αυτό.
Υλικά που θα χρειαστούν:
• A rectangular, καθαρό δοχείο
με νερό
• Μία πρέζα από γάλα σκόνη
• Φύλλα λευκού χαρτιού, 11X17
Φωτίστε με το λέιζερ μεσα από
το άδειο δοχείο. Μετά γεμίστε
το με νερό , προσθέτε λίγο γάλα
σκόνη και επαναλάβετε το
προηγούμενο βήμα. Ποια είναι η
διαφορά; 6.
AND IT CHANGES WHAT WE SEE
A pencil looks bent when it’s in a
glass of water.
You can see the glass jar when the
cup is empty but what if you fill
both with salad oil?
Materials needed
• 2 plastic cups
• A small glass jar
• Water & salad oil
• A pencil
Fill one of the cups with water
and put a pencil in it. Does it
look like it’s straight or bent?
Light turns the same amount
in glass as it does in salad oil.
Put the glass jar in an empty
cup—can you still see the jar?
Fill both with water and look
again. Then with salad oil --
what do you see and why?
7.
LENSES WORK BY REFRACTION
Eyeglasses, magnifying glasses,
telescopes and microscopes are
all examples of “lenses,” and
they work by refracting light. A
water bottle can be a lens too.

Materials needed
• A round, clear bottle, filled with
water.
• A piece of white paper.

Tape the paper to a wall and

write a capital “P” about 2” tall.
Look at it through the bottle
upright and then turned on its
side. What happens to the “P”?
8.
 BENDING LIGHT TO THE MIDDLE
Shine the laser from the left,
and it turns toward the middle.
It also reflects off the insides.
Shine from the right and the
opposite happens.
Somehow, the light rays
coming through the bottle
reverse what you see. Let’s
figure out how.
Materials Needed:
• A clear cup filled with water
• The laser pointer
Repeat the experiment you
did with the rectangular
container but shine the laser
straight at the cup and move
it from side to side, marking
on paper where it goes in and
where it comes out.
9.
 WHAT’S GOING ON?
Even though the light bends inside
the rectangular container, it comes
out the same direction it went in.
Focal Point
If you point the laser straight at
the bottle and move it from side to
side, the light beams will cross at a
“focal point.”
When you shine a light
through a rectangular
container of water with flat
parallel sides, it turns going
in, but turns back the way it
was when it comes out.
If the sides are curved, the
light turns going in, then
turns even more coming out,
crossing at a “focal point.”
This reverses the direction
of everything you see
through the bottle.
10.
 FIND THE FOCAL POINT
Materials Needed:
Focal Point Magnifying • A magnifying glass (about 3X)
Glass • A flashlight
• The paper with the P on it

Focal Length One way to find the focal point

Light from a
flashlight about is to shine a flashlight through
6 feet away
the magnifying glass to a wall.
The flashlight’s rays will meet at the
focal point. Move the glass back and forth
to make the smallest spot you
can, then measure the distance
between it and the wall.

Pull the magnifying glass

further away and look at the P
again. Why does it look like a d?
11.
 WHAT’S GOING ON?
Focal
Point
Focal
Point
You may have guessed that
there’s a focal point on both
P P sides (try it). Whether
things look upright or
Put the P on each And look from each reversed depends on which
side of one focal pt. side of the other.
side of the focal points the
When is the P right side up, upside down,
and/or backwards?
P is on and which side your
eyes are. There are 4
possibilities. Try each one
and draw what you see.
P
P
What happens if you put the
The lenses in our eyes have a focal point
P right at one focal point
inside our eyeball (and outside too) and and your eye at the other?
what we see gets flipped upside down and
backwards, but our brain flips it back.

12.
 MAGNIFYING
You can see how strong it is by
comparing the space between the
magnified lines and the actual ones.
Of course, the real purpose of
magnifying glasses is to
“magnify,” which means to
make things look bigger, as if
your eye is very close to them.
But if your eye were really
that close, things would be
blurry (try it—put your eye an
inch away from the “P”).
Now look through the
magnifying glass, paying
attention to how much bigger
it makes things look before it
flips everything over.
13.
 WHAT’S GOING ON?
P P
The two “P’s” are the same size, but
the one closer to your eye takes up
the red angle, which is wider than the
blue angle of the “P” farther away.
P
P A magnifying glass makes the
The “P” you see through the
magnifying glass looks this big
because the light reaching your eye
was bent to the wider red angle as if
the “P” were much closer.
When you stand very close to
the letter, it takes up most of
what you can see. The light
from the top of the “P” to the
bottom is spread out wider (we
say to a “wider angle”) than if
you stand farther away.
“P” look bigger because it
spreads out the light to the
same wide angles as if you
were standing very close. But
it’s not blurry, because it only
looks bigger, not closer.
14.
 ROUNDER VERSES FLATTER
How do some magnifying

P
P glasses make things look
bigger than others? Maybe it’s
their shape. Let’s find out.

Materials needed:
• One more magnifying lens,

P
around 15X. We’ll call it an
P “eyepiece lens.”

Compare it to the one you’ve

Which lens makes things look bigger
—the flatter or rounder one? Does
it make a difference how close it is
to your eye or to what you’re looking
at?
been working with: which
makes things look bigger;
which is rounder; which has a
longer focal length (remember
how to measure it?).
15.
MAKE A WATERDROP MICROSCOPE
Materials Needed:
• 2 clear plastic cups

Turn the cups upside down.

Tape a “sample” of something
you want to look at (a leaf,
Hold your eye very close to the
water drop to look through it.
dust, bug, etc.) to the bottom
of one. Dip a finger in water
and place a water drop near but
not in the center of the other.

Slide that cup over the first

one and look through the water
drop. Move it up and down until
You can see what’s in the middle
you see something not blurry .
clearly, not so much on the edges.
16.
LASER & CELL PHONE MICROSCOPE
You can take out the lens that
laser pointers have.
The laser pointer’s lens makes a
sharper image than a water drop.
A laser pointer and cell phone
can make a great microscope.
Materials Needed:
• A laser pointer.
• The plastic cup with something
taped to it.
• A cell phone with a camera.
Unscrew the top of the laser
pointer, remove the plastic
lens holder and pop out the
lens. Tape the lens over a cell
phone’s camera lens. Hold the
cell phone very close to take
microscope pictures.
17.
 PROJECTING AN IMAGE
Magnifying glasses can also
shine an image on a wall.

Stand by a window or an open

door, point a magnifying glass
at something outside and hold
a piece of white paper about a
foot behind. Move the glass
back and forth until the image
focal
point
something
far away
isn’t blurry--we say “in focus.”

Now point the magnifying glass

When an image is clear and not
blurry, we say it is “in focus.”
at something farther away and
focus the image again. Is the
space between the paper and
the magnifying glass the same?
18.
 FOCUSING A CAMERA
A camera lens moves in and out to
focus on a little screen inside.
Cameras have lenses that can
move in and out to focus
images on a little screen inside.
We used to have to move the
lens by hand to focus on things
that are closer or farther
away, but many cameras today
will do it automatically.
We’ve learned that our eyes
have lenses too, and we know
we can see things clearly at
different distances. But we
can’t move them in and out, so
how do we focus our eyes?
19.
 OUR EYES ARE LITTLE CAMERAS
Whether something is far away or
close, our lenses change shape to focus
right at the back of our eyeballs.
But some eyes are wider or narrower.
Eyeglasses bend the light before it
gets to your lenses so it will focus at
the right place inside your eyes,
Just like a camera, our eyes
have lenses that project
images on the back of our
eyeballs. But instead of moving
our lenses in and out, we have
muscles in our eyes that
change the shape of our lenses
—flatter for far away and
rounder to see up close.
But if our eyeball isn’t
perfectly round, our lenses
can’t change shape enough to
focus on the back, so we
invented eyeglasses to adjust
the angles of light coming in.
20.
 TELESCOPE PROJECT
Left to right: Magnifying glass tube,
screen tube (the screen is pushed
down inside), tin foil/pinhole tube,
and 15X eyepiece tube.
For the next set of
experiments, you will make 4
rolled paper tubes and put them
together in different
combinations to demonstrate
how a camera focuses, how a
pinhole camera makes images,
and how a telescope makes far
away things look closer.
Step-by-step instructions to
make the tubes are at the end
of this section of the lesson.
The next set of experiments
begin on slide 27 and assume
you’ve already made the tubes.
21.
 TO MAKE THE 4 TUBES
Materials needed:
• 4 sheets letter-size card
stock, 65 lb, dark color.
• The 15X eyepiece lens
• The 3X magnifying glass
• A plastic bottle, about the
same diameter
• Tin foil and tracing paper
Wrap the first
sheet around the Roll a sheet of card stock
bottle and tape. around the bottle - not so tight
that the bottle can’t slide – and
tape once in the middle. Roll a
second sheet around that and
Do this twice
tape again. Pull the pair off and
to make 2
Then wrap a repeat with two other sheets so
second sheet
pairs. around the first. you have 2 pairs, each with an
“inner” and “outer” tube.
22.
MAKE THE MAGNIFYING GLASS TUBE
Tape the magnifying glass to
one of the “outer” tubes.

Note: If the magnifying glass is

a little smaller in diameter than
the bottle and the rolled tubes,
wrap the rim of it with a layer
or two of foam tape.

Next, cut the bottle (a hacksaw

is safest) into three parts. Cut
off the top with the threads
and about an inch of the body.
Then cut about an inch off the
bottom and discard it (recycle)
but keep the middle piece.
23.
MAKE THE EYEPIECE TUBE
Take the 16X eyepiece lens and
glue or tape it into the inside of
the cut bottle top with the
more rounded side of the lens
facing away from the threads.

Then slip the bottle top with

the lens into an “inner” tube
just far enough so that it holds
itself in place. You will be
putting it in the tube with the
screen for one experiment and
in the tube that’s empty for a
different experiment.
24.
MAKE THE TUBE WITH A SCREEN
Cut a piece of a white plastic
garbage bag into a circle, about
2” wider than the bottle. Tape
over the mid-section of the
bottle, starting at one side,
then stretch the bag slightly
and tape the opposite side, and
go around the edge like that,
trying to keep the screen as
flat as possible.

Push it into an empty “inner”

tube until it’s all the way inside.

Keep pushing it until the screen

is about 3” from the other end
of the tube.
25.
MAKE THE PINHOLE TUBE

Cut a piece of tin foil about 4”

square and wrap it around the
end of the second “outer” tube.

Poke a pinhole in the middle of

the tin foil.

You can experiment with

different sized pinholes too.
Start with a thin needle, then a
thin nail, a thicker one, and so
on. What changes as the hole
gets bigger?

26.
OR USE MAILING TUBES
For the “outer”
You can use cardboard
tubes, cut down the mailing tubes if you
middle so they can
expand, then slide
prefer. Most everything
over an uncut tube is the same except the
(the “inners.”) Now
cut a strip of black
way you attach the
card stock and tape eyepiece lens.
over it on the outside.
Check that they slide
easily. Materials:
• Two 2 foot mailing tubes,
To attach the
eyepiece lens, glue or 2” or 3” diameter (the
tape it over a hole in
a paper or plastic disc
size that best matches
cut to the same size your magnifying glass).
as the tube. Then
tape the disc over
the end of the tube. Sacrifice a serrated
Everything else is the
knife or use a hacksaw to
same as with the cut them into four 11”
paper tubes.
pieces.
27.
 HOW CAMERAS FOCUS
You want the screen
closest to this end. Start the experiments by
sliding the tube with the
screen inside the tube with
the magnifying glass taped
to its end and look through it
Try it both with and at something outside that is
without the eyepiece lens.
very bright. Move the tube
back and forth to get an
image focused on the screen.

Then take the bottle top

with the eyepiece and slip it
into the tube with the
screen until it touches and
look again. What’s changed?
The view outside my window (without
the eyepiece lens).
28.
 PINHOLE “LENSES”
Look through the tube with
the tin foil at the same
scene again. What do you
see around the insides of
the tube?

Then slide the tube with

the paper screen inside the
pinhole tube and look at the
scene. It will be projected
on the screen, but a little
dim (do you know why?)

Slide the tubes in and out

The same view out my window, but the and see what if anything
image is darker. Do you know why? changes.
29.
 WHAT’S THE DIFFERENCE?
Something
far away
Focal points
shown yellow
A lens will only make a focused image
where all the light beams from each
part of the tree come together. (here
are some beams from the top in red and
from one of the branches in blue).
A pinhole doesn’t have focal points and
only lets in the light rays that are
headed straight through it, so they
make an image anywhere inside.
A camera lens takes all the
light beams coming at it from
each part of an object and
brings them together to
make a focused image at one
place only. If you put a
screen right there, it’s in
focus; either side, it’s blurry.
A pinhole only lets through
light beams coming directly
from each part of the
object. It doesn’t matter
where you put the screen to
focus, but it will be bigger or
smaller depending on where.
30.
MAKE THE TELESCOPE
Take the bottle top with
the eyepiece lens and slip it
into the empty tube. Then
slip that tube into the one
with the magnifying glass.

Like before, point the

tubes at something in the
distance but this time look
through the eyepiece. Move
the tubes to focus. What
do you see? How is it
different from when you
looked at the paper screen
without the eyepiece?

31.
 WHAT’S GOING ON?
The same view out my window with the
telescope. The leaves look close and in
focus, but not what’s further away.
Even if you take the
screen away, the image
is like it’s still there.
And that’s what the eyepiece lens
magnifies, so the tree looks closer.
By itself, the magnifying
glass makes far away things
look upside down, but smaller,
not bigger. But if you look at
what you see in the
magnifying glass through the
eyepiece lens, things look
bigger and closer.
That’s because the eyepiece
lens is magnifying the image
that you saw on the plastic
screen (remember we learned
how a magnifying glass makes
things look bigger? Go back
to that page-slide 14-if not).
32.
 COLORS IN THE RAINBOW
Rainbows show that sunlight is
made up of all the colors put
together.

They happen when there is a

light rain and the sun is low—in
The sunlight splits into colors when early morning or late
it enters the raindrop,
afternoon.
then reflects
off the back The sunlight bends (refracts)
wall of the when it goes through the water
raindrop,
in the raindrops. But different
colors bend to different
angles, so they split apart and
and splits apart even spread when they come out.
more when it leaves the raindrop.

Red is always on top. Why?

33.
 MAKE A RAINBOW
The sunbeam hits the top of the
water and bends, but all the colors
don’t bend the same amount, so
they start to spread out.
When the colors come out the side
of the glass, they bend even more
and spread out even further.
Materials Needed:
• A round glass
• An index card and white paper
Put the glass on a table where
the sun is shining and fill it with
water as high as you can. Place
the white paper flat on the
table next to the glass but away
from the sun. A rainbow will
appear on the paper. Lean the
index card against the glass on
the sunny side. and cast a
shadow over the rainbow, making
it easier to see the colors. How
does this rainbow compare with
the one in the picture?
34.
 WHAT’S GOING ON?
What we see as white
The sunbeam has all sunlight is actually all the
the colors, but some
are faster than colors of the rainbow mixed
others, at least together. But each color is
through the air.
traveling at a different
speed. Red is the fastest and
Violet is the slowest.

How fast they are going

The water slows all of them down, but the
fastest one is still fastest and the slowest
still slowest.
The air actually slowed them down a little
before they even got to the water. In outer
space, all the colors travel the same speed.
determines how much they
bend when they hit the
water. Red bends the least
and Violet the most. When
the colors come out of the
side of the glass, they bend
even more. But then they
speed back up again
(remember?) 35.
 PRISMS SEPARATE LIGHT TOO
A prism’s sides aren’t parallel, so
the light gets bent twice just
like with the glass of water and
spreads out into separate colors.
A narrow beam of sunlight
passing through a prism will
shine a rainbow on a wall.
A prism is a piece of glass
shaped like a triangle.
Materials Needed:
• A glass or acrylic plastic prism
• Shoebox
• Laser pointer
Hold the prism and shoot the
laser light beam through it from
different angles, noting how it
turns before coming out.
Make a slit in the side of the
box, point it at the sun and place
the prism to catch the sunbeam,
turning until you see a rainbow.
36.
 MAKE A SPECTRASCOPE
The rainbow a light makes is
called its “spectrum” and it
Cut the flap to leave
about 1/8” slot and
Cut out a ½”x ½” notch on
the top. is different for different
wrap tape around the
sides to hold in place.
lights. A “spectrascope” is a
tool that shows the
spectrum of a light.
Cut a CD in half and glue or
use double-sided tape to Materials Needed:
attach to the other flap.
• A large toothpaste-tube box
• A CD
Point the slot at a light and
look down on the CD to see
a rainbow.
See the instructions to the
Light goes in left to make a simple
the slot,
spectrascope. Try it out on
and reflects its color
“spectrum” on the CD.
several light bulbs. To see
Different types of lights
create different
the sun’s spectrum, point it
spectrums. at a cloud, not at the sun.
37.
 DIFFERENT LIGHT SPECTRUMS
The sun has all the colors we can
see, and they are arranged just like
in a rainbow.
The Sun
Incandescent lightbulbs show most
of the same colors, but they take
lots of energy. We now have LED’s
Incandescent bulb that save energy.

Fluorescent lamps save energy, but

they leave out some of the colors.
Fluorescent lamp We usually don’t notice.

Mercury Vapor is a type of light that

isn’t used much anymore. What do
you think about its colors?
Mercury vapor

38.
 FILTERING COLOR
The word “filter” means to take
some things out and leave others.
Jello makes a great filter for light.

Materials Needed:
• Jello, at least red and green
• Plastic cups to make it in
A red laser passes through
and lights up red jello.
• At least one laser pointer that’s the
color of one of the the jellos.

Make the jellos with half the water

the instructions say. When they are
set, turn the lights out and shine a
red laser through each. Try to look
through each color, then put red
But red won’t pass through and green together and look again.
green jello. What do you see and why?
39.
WHAT’S GOING ON?
A light filter doesn’t change
the color of everything you
see, it takes out every color
except the one you see.

When you look at something

? red through red jello, it
looks red, but what does
something red look like
through green jello? Why?

What would happen if you

? look through a red jello
filter on top of a green jello
filter? Why?

40.
 REFLECTING COLOR
Sunlight reflects all the colors
Green light only reflects green
Red light only reflects red
Materials Needed:
• A shoebox or something similar
• Bright red and bright green paper
• A red and/or green laser pointer
Cut a peephole about 1” round in
the side of the box. Cut a hole in
the top about ¼” round. Cut a 1”X2”
piece of each color of paper and
fold so they pop up. Place them in
the box, under the top hole.
Shine the red laser through the
top hole a little in front of the
colored paper and look through the
peephole. Try a green laser too.
What do you see and why?
41.
WHAT’S GOING ON?
Remember we said even if
something isn’t shiny, it still
reflects light. It just doesn’t
reflect all the light.

Like a filter, colored objects

only reflect the light that they
are colored and they absorb
the rest, like a sponge soaks up
water. So red objects absorb
? all the light except red, green
all except green, and so on.

And if a green object is lit only

by red light, it won’t reflect
any color.
42.
 LIGHT WE CAN’T SEE
Some streetlights only make a
yellowish light and it’s hard to
know what the colors are around
you if they’re not yellow. Luckily,
we can see dark surfaces with
just a little light, even if it is
Yellowish light reflects the yellow in the
grass, but just brighten the roadway. the wrong color. But what if
there’s no visible light at all?

There are some colors we can’t

NickSpiker - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0

see, like “infra-red” that comes

from warm things like our
bodies. But today there are
This Infra-red film makes warmer things special glasses and cameras that
like her skin look darker than cooler let us see infra-red and what’s
things like her hair. Visible light doesn’t
tell us what’s warmer or cooler. warmer or cooler.
43.
 SURF’S UP: WAVES
There are a lot more things
about light to discover:
We’ve learned it moves fast, but
how does it move at all?
If light is energy, what happens
to the energy when it is
Shalom Jacobovitz Cc-by-sa-2.0 absorbed instead of reflected?

Waves aren’t just in the ocean

What about all those colors we
and they can show us more can’t see--what are they doing
about what light does. while they move around?

That’s in the next lesson, To answer these and lots of

though, so stay tuned. other questions, we need to
learn about waves. But that’s for
next time.

44.