Try these experiments with your kids to explore optics, which is the science of light. There’s no telling what you might inspire.
Make a camera obscura
Find a room that can be made completely dark by covering the window with cardboard or black construction paper. Make a push-pin sized hole in the paper covering the window and watch how the image of outside appears on an inside, opposite wall. Hold up paper to the light coming through and ask your kids what they notice. A smaller-scale version can be made by putting a hole in one end of a cardboard box, and a white paper on the inside of the opposite end.
Witness light refraction
Put a stick or straw into a round clear drinking glass. Pour water into the glass and see how the straw changes when viewed from the side. Does the straw look bent/broken? Or, place a coin in a small bowl. Sit where you’re looking into the bowl but with the coin just out of view. Have someone fill the bowl with water and see what happens with your view of the coin.
Exploring optics with your kids is a memorable way to introduce them to this fascinating science, used in astronomy, medicine, photography and so much more.
Brought to you by:
David A. Hackett, OD, FCOVD
Lifetime Eye Care a division of Sterling Vision
4765 Village Plaza Loop Eugene, Oregon
(541) 342-3100 or 866-4EYELUV sterlingvision.com
