So. Scimatics. If you don’t already know, it’s the combination mathematics/science class we take when we get hungry. (Everybody eats lunch in Scimatics. Even at 8:30 in the morning.)
And for Scimatics, we had to do a project about light, and geometry, and myths, and art, and a bunch of other specific things that I won’t list now. They were all pretty relevant to what we were learning.
The basis of this project was that we had to create a non-digital representation of the story of Raven bringing the light, while showcasing the properties of light such as reflection, refraction, etc., but also using geometrical features like symmetry and a cylinder.
We actually had to write up descriptions for this project so, being lazy, I’m going to put mine here.
“Now, this was an interesting project to do, because although it focussed on science, it brought in some other subjects like a bit of art and math, and I think this says something about how integral science is to everything we do, even if we don’t think about it. I’m not great at art, so my representation of Raven bringing the light may not have looked amazing, but I think the ideas worked out. I used a transparent marble to refract the light ray and make it bigger, to represent the sun, and although when I designed this project I only had one light ray (from my phone), and I later replaced it with a flashlight, which has about six, I think it still works. I did find that I needed to have the light quite close to the marble to make it work, though, which could be a reflection on just how well the marble worked, or possibly how bright the light was. After being refracted by the marble, the light hits the stars, and the moon (represented by tinfoil vaguely-star-shaped-things and a tinfoil cylinder.). The tinfoil is a semi-reflective material, so it does reflect the light a little bit– enough to see, but not enough to cast light on anything else. I put all the stars and the moon behind Raven, as he had already dropped them all by the time he was dropping the sun, and I also made Eagle, who was chasing him, quite a bit smaller to show the perspective, so my project for the most part was asymmetrical. However, I did make the actual model of Raven symmetrical, using bilateral symmetry, as well as the moon and the stars; they just weren’t placed symmetrically. To make the ocean for this project, and to add some colour to contrast the large amounts of black and silver I had already used, I used blue construction paper, and covered it with some wax paper, which is translucent, so the colour of the opaque paper (and the light) still came through, just slightly diluted. The colour actually doesn’t draw that much attention, despite being one of the only bright colours in the project, because the light is aiming away from it, and, according to research by Ibn Al Haytham, light travels in straight lines. Additionally, colour is formed by a surface absorbing some types of light rays and reflecting others, which means that it would need light to be intensely coloured, the exception being that black, which absorbs all light rays, doesn’t technically need any to show up (which is why most of my project is painted black). That about sums it up. I hope I’ve been able to cast some light on the subject for you.”
And here’s a slightly dark picture for reference:
Toodles.