Good morning fellow out of the box thinkers and metaphorical peers.

During these classes, I’ve been Enlightened (pun intended) to how one of our most important senses works – Sight.

Before we had been taught ANYTHING, I paired with Lucy and Grace and we were asked a question. -how can you prove that light and sound are waves?- we dove right in.

I got the idea that without gravity, when you send a wave of water at a wall, it’ll come back to you (just like the good people in your life). So, we figured that if light and sound followed those same rules, that would classify them as waves. We conducted an experiment where we saw that the light if shone directly at a mirror would come back from where it originated, and if shone at an angle will reflect at the same angle in which it was shone originally.

After my group figured that out , we were taught about how that worked scientifically. To do this, we completed a lab, where we studied what happened when we shone concentrated light rays at mirrors, and how light rays react to curved (Concave and convex) mirrors. Turns out that there are three ways that they react, they are as in the diagram:

Light rays are like people, they are predicable, and they tend to be categorized into boxes. The category’s are reflected rays, refracted rays, and incident rays. Incident rays are those coming from the light rays, reflected rays are those  that bounce off of mirrors or other reflective surfaces.  Refracted rays are those that go through media such as lenses or other translucent medium. Light rays all change when they are put in different circumstances, and what changes depends upon the circumstance. For example, when light passes through a denser medium, it will refract, and the light particles will move slower.

Now for my favourite part! I personally consider myself a controlled pyromaniac, but you could think of me as more of a pyroenthusiest. To show us the true force of light, our teacher, Mrs.Klausen brought us outside on a bright and sunny day. We had been recently looking into concave and convex mirrors, and before us was the most incredible use for a  concave mirror i had ever imagined. It was a solar furnace. It takes the suns rays and they all shine through the focus, creating a space of compacted light. One other light machine is a synchrotron, a giant partical ecelerator which doesn’t use light, but creates light.

Compacted light can be very hot, and depending upon your light source, can burn.  We burned a girl guide cookie box, and saw what the mirror combined with the suns rays can do. It’s incredibly useful knowledge, if you ever see yourself lost in the wilderness without anything except the sun and a big concave mirror then you could have fire in minutes. I’m guessing there are better uses for solar furnaces though, I’m actually quite sure of it considering that Mrs.Klausen showed us a video all about the biggest solar furnaces in the world and their uses. I find that most things in life are useful, you just have to find the right use for them.

The laws of light were originally realized by a man named Ibn Haytham, not Isaac Newton. The laws of optics go far before Newton, instead they are from a time we call the golden age of science. In this age scientists and mathematicians gathered in the Middle East no matter their religion or political beliefs. I believe this is something that we could greatly learn from today.

Light is is one of the most important things in the normal day to day life, for without it, we are blind,  and so are the animals. There are many in this world living blind in many ways than one, but it would definitely take some getting used to for the whole world to be entirely without light. Even without mentioning that we cannot get enough vitamins without the sun, therefore we cannot be happy because of an endorphin which releases only with light. Never keep people in the dark, open up and know that lying only prolongs pain, it does no prevent it.

Metaphorically and not, light is one of the most important factors in life even if we cannot see it! Imagine the food chain, an absolute collapse of the ecosystem, after all plants feed off of light imagine the world without them, an imbalance of oxygen and carbon dioxide in our atmosphere, lack of food, we would be dead in days. Light is used for so many things today, other than sight, as for some light like UV can’t even be seen by humans.

Without light, and the understanding of it, I think not only would we be blind, but also lost – metaphorically and physically.

i hope that I have enlightened you some of the wonders of light, and that you’ve enjoyed my ensightfull reflections.