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The Magic of Light – Using spectroscopes and colour wheels to study the properties of light | Teach with space PR06

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ESA / Education / Teachers' Corner

In brief

Light is an interesting and inspiring topic due to the fact that pupils see and interact with it every day. In this set of activities, pupils are able to build a spectroscope that can be used to study different light sources, both white and coloured, in more depth. They will learn that white light can be broken down into many different colours, and that complex colours are made up of a combination of the three basic colours (red, green and blue). Pupils will make their own complex colours by mixing two basic colours on a colour wheel before producing white light using a colour wheel containing all the colours of the rainbow.

In-depth

LanguagesEnglish teacher guide and student guide, Dutch, French teacher guide, German, Slovenian, Spanish

Additional Resource: Appendix

Subject: Science, Geography

Age: 8-12 years old

Time: 40-60 minutes (depending on how long pupils want to spend designing) 

It is recommended that you teach the topic using all eight activities in order, as some of them lead on from each other. If you choose to teach a smaller selection of activities, or to change the order, use the table provided in the teacher guide to see which activities can be taught alone, and which require the completion of previous activities.

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