Colored Shadows

After our class on creating color, Izzy enjoyed playing with colored shadows.

Look at the yellow shadow!  It's made from combining two colors of light!


I wonder if the picture above is a knight off to vanquish the 'dragon' in this picture?

Thermochromic Art

In our last class, we are going to be learning about things that emit light or that change how they interact with light, and one of our activities will be making "thermochromic art."  This means that we will be using a black paint that appears black when 'cool' and changes to clear when 'warm'.

I would like for the students to have the opportunity to consider what sort of image they'd like to use before class so that they will not feel pressured and can be happy with their product.

In order to explain what I'm talking about, below are some silly examples showing a 'cold' image and its corresponding 'warm' image, in which the colors underneath are revealed when the black pigment becomes clear.

Based on my experimentation, my recommendations are:

• Choose something simple
• Revealing a number of colors seems to be the most visually effective
• White paint or paper under the disappearing-black paint doesn't get covered as well or look as clear when revealed as vivid colors
• Maybe even sketch out what the image will look like when 'warm' (when the black has disappeared) and then draw it again showing the black that will appear when it is 'cold'

Concave AND Convex Refraction Together!

This one's by the teacher, because I thought it was just really interesting.

It's hard to find a concave lens without disassembling a piece of equipment, but I accidentally found one in this glass stem.  The amazing thing is, it's convex at the same time!  The 'tube' of the stem bulges outward (convex), but the sides also swoop inward along the length, curving inward (concave).

So, we see both 1) the shrinking of the image and 'more' than we as we would see without the concave refraction, and 2) the flipping of the image because the object is outside the focal point of the convexity.

Colored-Light Art

In our class on Color today, I showed some random art that I had made up while experimenting with using colored light to reveal hidden images.

Since the class seemed to be pretty interested (and since I was asked), I am sharing that here in case anyone wants to try doing it themselves.  The image below explains what I did and shows the examples.  In case you would like to use your phone to create flashing light colors, I have saved the gifs I made in the linked Google drive folder: GIFs RGB Flash

Using the Focal Point

Rather than using refracted light itself in an artistic composition, Emery decided to use refracted light to create some artwork. Taking advantage of a convex lens' focal point, he used sunlight to burn images onto materials.





He was very surprised to discover that the paper would not light. Only the graphite from a pencil line drawn on the paper would ignite.

Why the Sky is Blue

Sophia made a comprehensive video explaining why the sky is blue and why we don't see upsidedown.

Light through Prisms

Ezra and his new best friend and constant companion, laser-pointer-flashlight, experimented with what happens to different types of light when you shine them through a faceted prism.

Laser through Prisms


Flashlight through Prisms


Here's how he created those images: