Week of october 12th

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The first thing we did this week was talk about why light bends. Then we went to all of these stations "carnival".  We went on the internet and looked at different videos of waves. The first video that I saw supported the Wave Model because the waves bounced off the wall and crossed over the other waves.  The second video I saw didn't support it because it moved too fast.  The third one did support it because it bounced off the wall but it also split and went around it.  The last one, like the first one, supported it because it bounced back.  For homework we answered questions on the review sheet.  This helped me to review for the test.  We drew a Ray diagram.  It showed where the light would go if it reflected off of and and if there was a wall in the way. We also drew a lot of rays and then put in pieces off wall to show why the light was going in all different directions.  I drew a helicopter because we were testing if there would be a big shadow or a small shadow when the helicopter was 1000 feet in the air.  It was a small but clear shadow because a lot of light was getting between the helicopter and the ground.  I also found out that when light hits a surface it reflects or refracts (one, other, or both).  This is because it depends on the surface.  We learned three key terms this week: opaque, transparent, and translucent.  Opaque means no light can go through (reflects).  Transparent means light can go through (refracts).  Translucent means it reflects and refracts, a little bit of light can still pass through.  We drew a line and had transparent on the far left, translucent in the middle, and opaque on the far right.  Then we reviewed how we see an object.  Light bounces off the object and the rays cross right at it hits the eye and then the brain flips the object.  For homework we tried to predict what will happen when light bounces off a prism.  I thought that the light would bounce around inside the prism, come out, and go in all different directions.  We watched an experiment on the computer.  There were two slinkies, a less dense one, and a more dense one.  My hypothesis was that the slinkies were like light waves.  The experiment was to have two slinkies attached and make a wave out of it.  My prediction was that the less dense slinky should wave more than the more dense slinky.  The result was that my prediction was correct and that the bigger wave was always the less dense slinky. The conclusion was that we failed to disprove our hypothesis.

I am now going to study for the test!!!!

-Kathy Gagliano

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