Light Scavengers
Students examine various materials to investigate how they interact with light. They use five characteristics—translucency, transparency, opaqueness, reflectivity and refractivity—to describe how light interacts with the objects.
Students investigate how light interacts with objectsCopyright http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/1/1b/Opacity_Translucency_Transparency.svg/2000px-Opacity_Translucency_Transparency.svg.png
Engineers care about light! Lighting engineers design ways to illuminate public and private spaces. Engineers also work to create new types of light fixtures and light bulbs, including some that are more energy efficient. In order to design illumination systems and create new devices, engineers must understand the properties of light and how it interacts with various materials.
After this activity students should be able to:
- Investigate how light interacts with an object.
- Describe whether a given object is transparent, translucent or opaque.
- Determine if light is reflected, refracted or goes directly through an object.