Shed Some Light on the Subject

Light is not the easiest concept to understand! Today, I met with three other fifth grade science teachers in the district and an awesome science education consultant from Endicott College to learn about the new science kits. The focus for today was light/color.

The difference between pigment and light was confusing at first. The primary colors of pigment are the colors we learned about in art class: red, blue, and yellow. The primary colors of light are red, blue, and green. So we had flashlights and colored filters and had to make sense of it all. We learned that when you use one color filter you are "subtracting" all the other colors in the electromagnetic spectrum (ROYGBIV). This is pretty obvious, you put a green filter (I call it gel from my theater days) in the light, all you see is green, but now I am able to explain why.

Then we put two filters of different color together and were very surprised with the results because it is not the same as mixing pigment. Another cool thing we learned is that you can use two flashlights with two different color filters and what shows up is close to white light again! This was interesting, hands on inquiry and my students will love it!

At the end of the day we got to play with mirrors. One flat, one concave, and one convex. We learned why a convex mirror works the way it does. Tomorrow, we will continue with the mirrors and experiment with reflection and refraction, etc.

I honestly do not remember learning about this in school. It is pretty brand new for me. We really talked out the concepts together and tried to help each other "get it." I am glad that our district is willing to help us learn this new curriculum.

The sound unit was easy and the magnetism unit looks like it will be too. Glad our students get to learn this!