Playing with Light & Lenses

The boys warmed up for science by building an awesome Lego creation that moved! Levi then did an amazing review of how the eye works using a picture in one of his library books.

We then spent some time trying to figure out the mystery of the "broken" pencil. Refraction of light can be pretty interesting!

Next up were concave and convex lenses.....

And how they affect light as it passes through them.

Properties of Light

After conducting an experiment to see what happens when light strikes different objects (opaque, translucent, and transparent) everyone chose the most transparent material for lenses and made binoculars or telescopes.

All the Colours of the Rainbow

As part of our science unit on light we have begun diving into the world of colour.  This week's challenge was to create 100 different colours using only red, blue and yellow paint (they were allowed to wipe their brushes with a paper towel but no rinsing with water). 

Predictably, everyone attacked this challenge in different ways:

Dane was very methodical and carefully explored his colours on the paper towel before to committing to them on his paper.

Bekah did her colour mixing directly on her final paper

but gradually used less paint on each square.

Levi did a dry-run on his paper towel first (mixing the colours in a square shape) and then did an exact replica on his final paper.

Matt went for lots of colour on his paper towel and final paper.

And, Sarah, she just went for it!

Let there be light ....

Continuing with our science unit on light we were ....

Playing with optical illusions 

Exploring the wavelengths of different colours

Using powder to show how light needs something to reflect off of

Demonstrating how our eyeball "sees" an object upside down

before the brain turns it right way up

An Eye for an Eye???!!!

To begin our unit on light we took a close look at our own eyes,

 Matt's eye

Bekah's eye

...explored the effect of light and no light on the size of our pupils,

and then took a very close look at a cow's eyeball!

Dane got a little bit wet (ugh!) with the initial cut on his eyeball so ....

Matt & Levi took refuge under the table while their eyeballs were cut open!

Bekah isn't quite sure what to think either!

 A side view

The lens and aqueous humour

The optic nerve

Ending on a pretty (?) note