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The Old White Sheet Trick: Light and Insect Behavior
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In this outdoor, nighttime activity, learners gather around a brightly lit, white surface and study the behavior of nocturnal animals attracted to the light, particularly night fliers.

Make a Green Gumball Black
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In this optics activity, learners use a shoebox, colored cellophane and sunlight to "change" the colors of gumballs. Learners will be surprised when the green and blue gumballs appear black!

Make a UV Detector
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In this activity, learners use tonic water to detect ultraviolet (UV) light from the Sun and explore the concept of fluorescence.

First Impressions
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Learners experiment with a commercial photo-sensitive paper (Sunprint® or NaturePrint® paper). They place opaque and clear objects on the paper and expose it to bright light, observing the results.
Glowing Tonic
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In this sunny day activity, learners compare how a cup of water and a cup of tonic water reflect or refract light in the sun.

Observing Insects at Night
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In this activity, learners set up a night time insect observation station with a light and sheet.

Light is Made of Colors
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Learners observe different light sources, outdoors and indoors, using prism glasses (diffraction glasses) and color filters.

Self-Portrait Silhouettes: Activity 2
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In this activity, learners make a photographic image—without a camera!

Globe at Night
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In this international citizen science activity, learners measure their night sky brightness and submit their observations into an online database.

Why Are Bubbles So Colorful?
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In this activity, learners explore why they can see colors in bubbles and why they change.

Finding the Size of the Sun and Moon
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In this activity, learners build a simple pinhole viewer. They use this apparatus to project images from a variety of light sources, including a candle, the Sun, and the Moon.

Make a Garbage Bag Kite
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Make a kite out of a garbage bag, shower curtain, painting tarp--anything light, thin, flexible and plastic!

Exploring Ultraviolet (UV) light from the Sun
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In this outdoor activity, learners explore UV rays from the Sun and ways to protect against these potentially harmful rays.

Sensory Hi-Lo Hunt
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In this outdoor activity, learners use only their senses to to find the extremes of several environmental variables or physical factors: wind, temperature, light, slope and moisture.
What Causes Rainbows?
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In this activity, learners explore how and why rainbows form by creating rainbows in a variety of ways using simple materials. Learners create rainbows indoors and outdoors.

Pringles Pinhole Camera
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An ordinary camera has a lens that makes an image on film. In a pinhole camera, a small hole replaces the lens.

Observing the Moon
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Use this Moon Map Guide to help learners identify features on the Moon, while looking through a telescope.

Sun Prints
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This activity uses a special paper that can create images with exposure to the Sun. Collect objects of different shapes and sizes and use them to make interesting patterns on your sun print.

Bring it into Focus
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In this activity (page 2 of PDF), learners play with a lens and a piece of paper to focus an image on the paper. Learners look at different things, and see how the lenses affect the image.

The Thousand-Yard Model
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This is a classic exercise for visualizing the scale of the Solar System.