First class were very excited to get working on our entry for this years Ravenswell Science Fair. Each class has been assigned a different strand and unit of the Science Curriculum to ensure we’re not all covering the same areas. Our class got “Energy and Forces: Light” 💡 and we’re absolutely delighted!! (Great topic!!😀)
We started yesterday and learned what a source of light is and identified the many different sources of light which can be categorised into natural and man-made.
- Natural
- Lightening
- The Sun
- Stars
- Fire
- Lava
- Man-made
- Street lights
- Lamp
- Torch
- Car light
- Computer screens
We learned that the moon is not a source of light itself – did you know that the moon is actually a huge reflector, like a mirror?
We played a sorting game to practise this knowledge, and we completed a sorting worksheet.
We always follow the Scientific Method in our class for experiments, so this means we start our investigations with a question. Our stimulus question was “how does light travel? “ and we started by looking at some photographs. The photos drew out of us that light travels in sunbeams or sun rays and we predicted that light travels in a straight line. (Because we could see straight sun beams in the pictures and sometimes themselves in real life. )
Next we had to conduct an experiment to prove or disprove this.
The materials we used for our experiment included
- 3 old cds
- 8 clothes pegs
- a light source (lamp or torch)
- string
- piece of card
This was our procedure:
- Stand up each CDs using 2 clothes pegs as a stand.
- Line up the 3 CDs by placing the piece of string through their centers.
- Stand up the piece of card using 2 pegs. This is our screen.
- Shine a light source ( lamp or torch) through the CDs.
.
Results: If the CDs are in a straight line, we can see the light on the screen. If one CD was moved out of alignment, the light rays were blocked. Light does indeed travel in a straight line.
Conclusion: We see things through Reflection – more new vocabulary that we learned today. Light travels from a light source and bounces off an object and into our eye – that’s how we see. And this light travels in a straight line called a ray or beam of light.
We discussed our results and conclusions and wrote our reports.
Next we are going to have great fun learning about Refraction, the bending of light – we’ll keep you posted!
