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Exploring Light - 1 of 3 Exploring Light Brief Summary This exhibit allows visitors to experiment with light and colors. They can break light up into its spectrum of colors, block certain parts of the spectrum to see what color remains, mix parts of the spectrum to form new colors, and do other color- mixing activities. They can also use a spectroscope to analyze the colors to see what spectral colors they are made from. Main Teaching Points Light can be broken down into its constituent colors. Combining all of the parts of the visible light spectrum yields white light. However, if you combine light from only a portion of the spectrum, you will get a different color. You can use a spectroscope to analyze the color composition of a sample of light and determine the history of that light. Astronomers use spectroscopes to analyze the light coming from stars to determine how the light was produced. Educational Strategy This exhibit allows visitors to experiment with color mixing in a very hands-on way. It also allows them to follow the history of the light starting at its source (the bulb) as it is broken up, filtered, recombined, and perceived in their eyes. This exhibit is very aesthetically pleasing, so that many visitors will enjoy it for that reason alone, even if they are not interested in the scientific principles that it demonstrates. It is grouped with Seeing the Sun and Infrared Experiments so that this area of Space Odyssey covers different aspects, in different ways, of a fundamental concept in astronomy: Studying objects by monitoring and analyzing light. Suggested ways of facilitating this interactive Try this: Show how you can create different colors using different sliders. Show how the sliders block different parts of the spectrum and the color in the circle is the result of recombining the part of the spectrum that was not blocked. Or, try this: Use the spectroscope to look at the colored circle. Exploring Light - 2 of 3 How does what you see in the spectroscope relate to the parts of the spectrum that you blocked with the sliders? Questions and Answers What does this have to do with space science? Astronomers use spectroscopy to study the light from stars and determine how that light was created. Each of the parts of that process has an analog in this exhibit. The light bulb represents the star where the light is produced. The slider represents the atmosphere of the star where some of the light is blocked by various components. The circle of colored light represents the light from the star as it is seen from the Earth. The spectroscope is used to analyze the light and determine its history, just as astronomers use spectroscopes to analyze starlight to determine the composition of the star, the atmosphere of the star, and other intervening objects (such as clouds or the Earth’s own atmosphere) which might have impacted the light on its journey to Earth. Why do colors mix to form a single color? The reason you see a single color is because of the way your eyes and brain work, and has nothing to do with the physics of light. For example, if you mix green light with red light it will appear yellow to your eye. It will look just like the yellow part of a spectrum (spectral yellow). However, if you look at the yellow light made from red and green in a spectroscope you will not see any yellow bands. You will only see green and red bands. If you look at spectral yellow light through a spectroscope you will see a yellow band. Light that may look the same to the human eye and brain may look very different in the spectroscope, which shows what the light is really made of. Demo: You can see this effect using the Gas Tube Spectroscopy activity. Other Cool Stuff to Try Use the prism sliders to break the spectrum into two parts. The colors of each of these parts are complementary to each other. That is, they recombine to form white light. Use colored filters from the Gas Tube Spectroscopy activity in conjunction with this experiment. Operating Tips Potential Problems Exploring Light - 3 of 3 Background materials collections links) (websites, videos, articles, digital http://csep10.phys.utk.edu/astr162/lect/light/absorption.html – absorption and emission spectra http://mo-www.harvard.edu/Java/MiniSpectroscopy.html – spectroscopy interactive http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap000815.html – the solar spectrum