The laser pointer has been widely used to demonstrate some simple optics phenomena, like reflection, refraction, total reflection, and diffraction. However, the rays of laser light cannot be seen in the air because the scattered light is too weak. Many physics teachers use milk or smoke to visualize rays of laser light in physics labs, but it is…

White light refracted by a glass edge or a prism might be split into the colors of the rainbow but, when restricted by a suitable arrangement of edges, might also yield a sequence of colors complementary to the rainbow. We studied the creation of these color fields experimentally with a setup consisting of RGB light-emitting diodes that cover all…

It's not surprising that rainbows have received a great deal of attention: in textbooks, in magazines, and on the web. They are, after all, beautiful, fascinating, occasionally awe-inspiring, even a little mysterious. They are an almost perfect blend of natural beauty and simple physics. Has everything that can be said about rainbows already been…

Student feedback from an undergraduate biochemistry lab course suggested the use of visibly traceable proteins may assist learning. Based on this feedback, we used guided inquiry lab exercises where students developed and characterized a suite of fluorescent protein-dihydrofolate reductase (DHFR) fusions as tools for a biochemistry teaching lab.…

Laboratory experiments provide students a tangible means of understanding dry, abstract concepts. A simple and engaging introductory wet chemistry laboratory has been developed relating quantum mechanics to color, which has been implemented for a class of about 600 students per academic year for over three years at Brown University. Color is an…

When doing experimental work of image formation by mirrors and (thin) lenses, it turns out again and again that students often have partially incorrect preconceptions about how the light emerging from an object passes through a lens and how the image is formed on a screen or directly in the eye. To check students' prior knowledge and help get a…

Full shadows, partial shadows and multilayer shadows are explained based on the phenomenon of the linear dispersion of light. This paper focuses on progressing the understanding of shadows from physical and mathematical perspectives. A significant relationship between light and color pigments is demonstrated with the help of the concept of sets.…

Prismatic refraction is a classic topic in science education. To investigate how undergraduate students think about prismatic dispersion, and to see how they change their thinking when observing dispersed images, five teaching experiments were done and analysed according to the Model of Educational Reconstruction. For projection through a prism,…

In this article we propose an activity aimed at introductory students to help them understand the Stefan-Boltzmann and Wien's displacement laws. It only requires simple materials that are available at any school: an incandescent lamp, a variable dc energy supply, and a computer to run an interactive simulation of the blackbody spectrum.…

Students' misconceptions concerning colour phenomena and the apparent complexity of the underlying concepts--due to the different domains of knowledge involved--make its teaching very difficult. We have developed and tested a teaching device, the addition table of colours (ATC), that encompasses additive and subtractive mixtures in a single…

We study the misconceptions about colour that most people hold, determining the general phenomenological laws that govern them. Concept mapping was used to combat the misconceptions which were found in the application of a test specifically designed to determine these misconceptions, while avoiding the possible misleading inductions that could…

This study aimed to investigate the effect of experimenting with physical manipulatives (PM), virtual manipulatives (VM), and a blended combination of PM and VM on undergraduate students' understanding of concepts in the domain of "Light and Color." A pre-post comparison study design was used for the purposes of this study that involved 70…

This paper shows how the patterns of variation created in the teaching were critical in helping a class of Primary 3 students in Hong Kong to learn about the colour of light, so that the students attained conceptual rather than procedural knowledge. A "Learning Study" approach was adopted, which is a Lesson Study grounded in a particular…

This study focused on misconceptions related to light and vision. Researchers administered diagnostic tests about light, vision, and color before and after instruction to 227 fifth-grade students over a 2-year period. They also conducted 11 clinical interviews. The tests and interviews revealed that almost all students shared certain…

Designed for instruction of emotionally handicapped children and youth, six articles deal with art concepts and activities relative to outdoor education. Presenting over 100 activity suggestions, the first article emphasizes art in nature and states seven objectives which point toward creative development of such concepts as color value, two…