Discussion Questions
- Did you ever shine a flashlight in the bathroom mirror? What happened? Why?
- Do you have any prisms at home? How do you use them? What have you noticed about them?
- Have you noticed that objects underwater look different? Maybe bigger? Do you have any idea why?
- What do you know about optics?
- Have you heard of fiber optics? What do you know about it?
Experiment Instructions
We explained the procedure with the flashlights, prisms, and index cards.
Experiment
Each girl had a handout, flashlight, prism and index card. After slitting the index card, the girls
followed the instructions on the handout:
- They predicted the direction of the flashlight beam
- They oriented the prism and flashlight (as shown on the handout)
- They recorded the results
The girls were encouraged to explore with different angles of light and different orientations of
the prism. If time allowed, the girls experimented with multiple prisms.
Discussion
We began discussion by asking the girls what they discovered during the experiment:
- Were their prediction results close to the actual results?
- What did they learn?
Finally, we briefly explained reflection and refraction, and used fiber optics as an example of application.
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