When you ask your students, “How is it that light allows us to see?” What you’re really asking is: “how does information over there get over here to where I can sense it?” This may seem like an intuitive and easy to answer question, but for hundreds of years it baffled even the greatest thinkers. Aristotle, Euclid, Ptolemy, Galen and …
Discrepant Events with Light and Color
Discrepant events occur when a student’s prior knowledge clashes with what’s happening right in front of their eyes. The wonderful moments created by the cognitive dissonance of a discrepant event is a powerful tool for developing inquiry skills. When what happens does not match students’ expectations, we can expect them to get curious pretty quickly. Discrepant events are almost always …
Are green laser pointers safe?
Are Green Laser Pointers more dangerous than Red Laser Pointers? What makes a green laser pointer safe? Even at very low power, green laser pointers and green LASER Blox™ are significantly more visible than red laser pointers. That’s because a common green laser pointer emits a monochromatic beam at 532nm, a wavelength that is very close to 550nm—the wavelength to which the human eye …