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Showing results 21 to 40 of 51
The Blind Spot
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In this activity (1st on the page), learners find their blind spot--the area on the retina without receptors that respond to light.
Personal Pinhole Theater
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Have you ever heard of a camera without a lens? In this activity, learners create a pinhole camera out of simple materials. They'll see the world in a whole new way: upside down and backwards!
Telescopes as Time Machines
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This fun, nighttime hands-on astronomy activity lets learners explore how long it takes for light from different objects in the universe to reach Earth.
Seeing in the Dark
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In this activity (17th on the page), learners investigate why you cannot see colors in dim light.
Critical Angle
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In this optics activity, learners examine how a transparent material such as glass or water can actually reflect light better than any mirror.
The Senses of "Unknown Creatures"
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In this activity, learners use earthworms as "unknown creatures" from the South American jungle to find out how animals use senses.
How Our Environment Affects Color Vision
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In this lab (Activity #1 on page), learners explore how we see color.
Stroboscope
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In this activity (posted on March 20, 2011), learners follow the steps to construct a stroboscope, a device that exploits the persistence of vision to make moving objects appear slow or stationary.
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.
Terrestrial Hi-Lo Hunt
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In this outdoor activity, learners search for the warmest and coolest, windiest and calmest, wettest and driest, and brightest and darkest spots in an area.
Wintergreen
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In this outdoor, winter activity, learners find living green plants under the snow and determine the light and temperature conditions around the plants.
Lager Lamp
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In this demonstration, adult learners create a lava lamp using beer and nuts! Use this pub-themed activity to demonstrate the effects of buoyancy and bubbles.
Accommodating Accommodation
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In this demonstration (18th on the page), learners conduct a simple test to explore how the cornea refracts light, which is further bent by the eye lens through a process known as accommodation.
Sliding Gray Step
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How can you make one shade of gray look like two? By putting it against two different color backgrounds! This activity allows learners to perform this sleight of hand very easily.
CD Spinner
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In this activity, learners create a simple “top” from a CD, marble and bottle cap, and use it as a spinning platform for a variety of illusion-generating patterns.
Afterimage
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In this activity about vision and optical illusions, learners conduct a simple test to demonstrate how our eyes create "afterimages." Learners stare at a black cardboard bat for at least 30 seconds an
See It to Believe It: Visual Discrimination
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In this activity (12th on the page), learners investigate their ability to discriminate (see) different colors.
Rainbow Film
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In this activity, learners use clear nail polish to create a beautiful iridescent pattern on black paper. Learners discover that a thin film creates iridescent, rainbow colors.
Falling Feather
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In this physics activity, learners recreate Galileo's famous experiment, in which he dropped a heavy weight and a light weight from the top of the Leaning Tower of Pisa to show that both weights fall
Camera Projector
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In this activity (posted on March 14, 2011), learners follow the steps to construct a camera projector to explore lenses and refraction.