Preparation:
Prism, white wall or screen
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Steps:
The children look through the prism and find that they can see
something which is
in front of them, although they are looking down; that parts of the
body seem to be cut off etc.
They hold the prism into the sunlight and try to project it onto
different surfaces. They see that a coloured spot of light appears on the
opposite wall. They recognize the colours of the rainbow.
They examine the shape of the prism and see that it has a pyramid
shape.
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Scientific Explanation:
A prism is a body made of
transparent refractive material, limited by at least two planes that
intersect. Usually it is a three-sided prism (pyramid shape). Rays of light
are broken by the "thick" side of a prism and are separated
according to their wavelength. Thus the light is split up into the colours of
the spectrum (red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, violet).
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Possible Variation:
The children paint the
colours of the rainbow, they arrange the pens in the order of the colours of
the spectrum.
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