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Soap Bubble Shapes
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Learners explore three-dimensional geometric frames including cubes and tetrahedrons, as they create bubble wands with pipe cleaners and drinking straws.
Pinhole Viewer
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In this activity, learners discuss and investigate how cameras, telescopes, and their own eyes use light in similar ways.
Film Canister Farming
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In this hands-on botany activity, learners sprout vegetables in film canisters.
Seeing Your Retina
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In this quick optics activity, learners use a dim point of light (a disassembled Mini MagLite and dowel set-up) to cast a shadow of the blood supply in their retina onto the retina itself.
What is Light?
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In this four-part activity, learners will discover the exciting world of light--the most important form of energy in our world--and be able to identify and describe different types of light.
Soap-Film Interference Model: Get on our wavelength!
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By making models of light waves with paper, learners can understand why different colors appear in bubbles.
Eye Spy
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This fun activity uses simple materials such as milk cartons and mirrors to introduce the ideas of optics and visual perception.
Mini Zoetrope
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In this activity (posted on March 27, 2011), learners follow the steps to construct a mini zoetrope, a device that produces an illusion of action from a rapid succession of static pictures.
Persistence of Vision
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If you had a long tube with a 5 millimeter wide slit, would you see the entire Golden Gate Bridge?
Phantom Phlame
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In this trick, hold your hand over a burning candle without getting burned, by reflecting and transmitting the light of two candles. This activity is best suited as a demonstration.
Tie Dye Painting
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This is an activity exploring color and color mixing.
Hot Air
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In this activity, learners set up an experiment to investigate the effects of hot air on the path of a laser beam.
Kaleid-o-mania
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In this hands-on activity, learners build their own kaleidoscopes and explore how light can reflect of off surfaces such as mirrors, to produce beautiful patterns.
Afterimage
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In this activity about vision and optical illusions, learners conduct a simple test to demonstrate how our eyes create "afterimages." Learners stare at a black cardboard bat for at least 30 seconds an
Slide Projector Activities
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This resource contains several mini-explorations using a slide projector as a light source to investigate light and the properties of images.
Pringles Pinhole Camera
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An ordinary camera has a lens that makes an image on film. In a pinhole camera, a small hole replaces the lens.
Writing for Night Vision
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In this activity (page 1 of the PDF under SciGirls Activity: Forensics), learners will use a home video camera with a “night vision” mode to test how various inks appear outside the spectrum of visibl
On the Fringe (formerly Bridge Light)
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In this activity, learners trap a thin layer of air between two pieces of Plexiglas to produce rainbow-colored interference patterns.
Turbidity
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This is an activity about turbidity, or the amount of sediment suspended in water.
The Old White Sheet Trick: Light and Insect Behavior
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In this outdoor, nighttime activity, learners gather around a brightly lit, white surface and study the behavior of nocturnal animals attracted to the light, particularly night fliers.