Plant leaves are green because they contain the green photosynthetic pigments, chlorophylls a and b. Popular science literature, and sometimes even textbooks, state that the greenness is caused by reflection of green light by chlorophyll. In the present study, we compared the reflectance spectra of green leaves to yellow or white leaves of the…

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…

The quality of learning processes is mainly determined by the extent to which students' conceptions are addressed and thus conceptual change is triggered. Colour phenomena are a topic within initial instruction of optics which is challenging. A physically adequate concept of white light is crucial for being able to grasp the processes underlying…

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,…

Is moonlight "silver" or "cold"? In this paper we discuss the interesting combination of factors that contribute to the common descriptions of moonlight. Sunlight is reflected from the lunar surface and red-shifted. When traversing the atmosphere, moonlight is further depleted of short wavelength content by Rayleigh scattering.…

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 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 to address the major conceptual problems associated with light and vision, appearances of surfaces, and color, this module can be used with high school students or college nonscience majors including those in elementary education. It is one in a series developed by the project "Overcoming Critical Barriers to Learning in Nonmajors'…