Light In A Box

As you know we have been doing a lot of cool stuff with light.
This week we made a "magic light box".
Well, it's not really magic but it sure seems like it!
We painted a box, put holes on the top and eye holes on the side.
We taped tin foil on the top to help "reflect" the sun into the bottles.
We filled the plastic bottles with clear and colored water.

Although "refraction" is a concept beyond this age group,we 
still thought it would be a fun and interesting project.
We let the kids experiment with the different water colors and discovered that the clear water was much brighter than the colored water.
We asked questions like, "what happens if there is no sun?"
We covered up the box to find out.
We simplified the concept of refraction by explaining that the water slowed down the light and captured it in the bottle.

The kids liked the box but we found they got more out of it 
when they were allowed to play with the bottles separate from the box.
 They found out they didn't need the box to make a cool light show.
They only needed the sun!

















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