Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, it’s finally here, the one post you’ve all been waiting for, the one, the only, Scimatix post!!! This unit we learnt about light and reflected and refracted rays. Did you know that the reason we can see is because light reflects off of objects and back into our eyes. For this project we first watched a great video about life on earth that produce or reflect light to make it appear as if they produce light. It was amazing to see so many different animals and fungi use light in this way. It really opened my eyes to the world as a beautiful enLIGHTed place. Ok… enough with the puns. The video was great and actually taught me lots of fundamentals of light like the fact that it’s made up of particles and travels in waves. After learning about the basic fundamentals and some other amazing things on light it was time to learn about reflected light rays.  

We first learnt about reflected light rays against a plain mirror. A plain mirror is a mirror that is flat, these are the ones that you normally see. The reflected ray comes out at the same angle of degree as the incident ray goes in. So, if the ray of light was shining at a 20 degree angle it would reflect off and come back at a 20 degree angle. This is why a mirror looks as if it’s projecting everything perfectly and in the same spot, but if you pay attention you will notice that everything is flipped slightly. Like if you raise you’re right arm the figure reflected off the mirror will raise his left. This is because light fires back at the same angle. After learning about plain mirrors we learnt about concave and convex mirrors. A concave mirror is one that is curved inwards like a cave. A convex mirror is one that is curved outwards so that you can see more around you. We learned about a focal point and the center of curvature. Instead of spending hours explaining to you what happens to the light rays that go to the mirrors I will just show you with some diagrams below.

After learning all about reflected rays, it was time to learn about refracted rays. These were the rays that traveled through a lens or another object. We observed what happened when the light went through a lexan block. I was shocked to see that the light actually bent well going through, but straightened out again at the end. We saw that the light rays went in at the same angle that they went out of again because they bent. After a little more observing  what would happen what the light went through different liquids, we got into partners and did a quick lab on refracted rays through biconcave and biconvex lenses. I was partners with my boy Sam Cui. It was very interesting to see the light rays make different patterns when shining it through the lenses at different angles. It was also cool learning about virtual and real images. Look below for some different work Sam and I did on biconcave and biconvex lenses, including some diagrams.

In the end I learnt so much new amazing things about light. We did a test and our unit is now over. I loved all the individual and group work and I also loved watching different documentaries about light. I really enjoyed this unit and I’m very excited for my next project in Scimatix. Spoiler alert, we are doing building in an earthquake prone area using science and math. Hope you loved this post. Big shoutout to my awesome teacher Mrs Klausen for, as always, teaching us amazing new things in brilliant and awesome new ways. This sums up my first Scimatix post. More soon to come. And as always…..

Until next time… Aedan Loughran