Light It Up

Need a bright idea for an engaging lab? Watch your class light up as they explore the difference in efficiency between incandescent and LED bulbs! The resource makes use of simple materials and encourages learners to infer what's...

Could you reinvent the light bulb? Scholars tap into their inner Thomas Edisons to build a light bulb prototype out of a jar and some wires. They see how long the filament wire glows in the jar (batteries not included) to measure their...

How do you get the most light out of a light bulb? That's the task Max Planck took on, and it turned out to be rather...enlightening! The illustrated video introduces physics scholars to Planck's plight, which ultimately changed our...

While we are all familiar with what happens when you turn on a light bulb, Albert Einstein was convinced that there was more happening than meets the eye. The video describes his extension of the research of others to ultimately...

Any work with light, lenses, lasers, or mirrors is called optical engineering. Optical engineers bend and bounce light to make it useful for humans. Examples are telescopes, invisibility, nanomedicine, and solar energy. This...

Four modules are a part of this stellar lesson plan. Space scientists view the electromagnetic spectrum, they generate waves on a computer screen in order to measure frequency and wavelength, discover how light is related to temperature,...

"But still try, for who knows what is possible." - Michael Faraday. Faraday's advice features in a simulation that permits pupils to play with a bar magnet in order to make a light bulb glow connecting electromagnetic induction to...

Through an introduction to the design of lighting systems and the electromagnetic spectrum, learners learn about the concept of daylighting as well as two types of light bulbs (lamps) often used in energy-efficient lighting design....

Visible light waves are the only electromagnetic waves we can see. We see these waves as the colors of the rainbow. Each color has a different wavelength. Red has the longest wavelength and violet has the shortest wavelength. When all...

Investigate color, light and excited electrons and produce waves using slinkys. Your high schoolers will observe a continuous spectrum with a prism and an overhead projector. They observe flame tests to identify elements and they observe...