Discussion of the section on color Here are some things to do to finish this section.
Did you think of a question that could be studied, or make an observation
that was interesting or unexpected? You should send it to the Question
Board!
Discuss these questions with the people in your group:
Study the spectra of objects of various bright colors. Try to determine
how their spectra are related to their colors -- how orange is different
from green, or purple is different from yellow.
Explain how to verify that grass is green and dandelions are yellow, using
your spectroscope.
Suppose you arrange two overhead projectors so
that they are illuminating the same white screen,
and then put different
colored filters on them. What color or colors appear on the screen
where they overlap?
Red plus green makes .... what?
Even more fun is to find three overhead
projectors, and have three beams (red, green and blue) illuminating the
screen. (This will work best if you block any white light that your filter
is
not big enough to cover). What color will the screen be? How many shadows will an
object have, and what color
are they? What determines where the shadows are and what color they are?
One of our activities was called subtracting colors,
while another was called adding colors.
Explain why we used the terms addition and subtraction. What are
we adding and subtracting? What do you get if you add all the light
together? What about if you add all the color filters together?
When you mix paint of different colors, do you use the "color addition"
or the "color subtraction" rules?
What color or colors of light does grass most likely need in order to grow?
(This is not a biology question. It is a physics question, and your
discussion
should be based on something you learned in this section).
These discussion questions are a bit open-ended, and some people find them
very confusing. We have provided
some examples of good and bad discussions on a
separate page.
Please send
us your discussion of two of these questions -- the one you are most sure
about and the one you are least sure about (and tell us which is which!).
Don't forget to tell us who is in the group.
If there is something that you don't understand about color Ask
us! This is the end of this section.
The
next section is about light beams.