Light and Mirrors

This week in Mr. Finley’s science class we did a lot of experiments! We also earned quite a few ideas including things like reflection. We learned that if you shine a laser onto a mirror, then you see a faint dot on the mirror where you would expect the laser to point. If you look around the room, you’ll find the proper dot that is shining just as bright as it would without the mirror redirecting its light. Now you might be saying to yourself, doesn’t that mean that the lasers’ light is reflecting twice? Once off the mirror onto the wall, and off the wall into your eyes. Yes, it’s true!! That is what happened with those good old lasers and mirrors! The way we know that this is happening is we tested it; of course! If you get the erasers and clap the dust out of them like we did last week, you can see the direct path of the laser going from the laser itself, off the mirror, and onto the wall! Amazing!!

We learned these ideas in science by observing, making hypothesizes, and experimenting. Mr. Finley would tell us an idea once and while and make us figure out if it is true of false by testing it! Science is so exciting! As a class we discussed certain things like- how is it possible that the light from the laser is over on the wall over there, even though we’re pointing at the mirror?! It was a stumper until we experimented and taught ourselves how it works.

It is SO important to know these ideas! I mean sure, I could have lived a long, happy life without knowing how lasers work, but now that I know, it’s so great! We really should know how these things work because it is a part of our everyday lives. We use light to see all the time and I mean ALL THE TIME. Lasers have a great deal of real world application…. I think!

Light

What science ideas did you learn?

I learned that when you use a laser pointer there is a stream of light. the light bounces off of particles, such as the flour particles, and we are able to see the stream of light. I also learned that when you go into a dark room with absolutely no light entering the room, you can't see anything. light needs to bounce off objects and enter your eyes to let you see things. The last idea i learned is that when using a light bulb

How did you learn these ideas?

i learned these ideas in many ways. the main ways were by experamenting, discussing, and learning from Mr. Finley. an example of when we experamented was with the laser pointers. we had a theory that there was a light beam that our eyes can not see. we used the supplies Mr. Finley supplied us which were socks, flour, and erasers, to test this theory. we experamented and found that if we clapped the erasers with four on them and created lots of dust, we could see the light beam which was not visible to us before.

Why is it important to know this idea (What real world application is there)?

it is important to know this idea of light because we use light everyday and we should know how it works. it is important to know how our eyes work also. we should know things like how we see in the dark and if we can see at all.