An Experiment to Use with "The Ocean of Truth: The Story of Isaac Newton"

What is light? This question has interested scientists for hundreds of years. Isaac Newton discovered that light is made up of a spectrum of colored light. He used a prism in his research, but you can use a pan of water to "refract" or bend light. The lab sheet is provided so that you can record what you discover!

There is a story about Isaac Newton that he chanced upon a prism at a book fair during his college years. Despite his thrifty nature, he purchased the curiosity and proceeded to invent dozens of experiments with the light and prism. When he observed how the prism cast a "rainbow" on the wall, he hypothesized that the prism was splitting the light into bands of many different colors of light. To test his hypothesis, however, he had to wait for another fair so that he could purchase a second prism to put all the colors back together!

Isaac Newton went on to make many important discoveries in the fields of physics and mathematics. He wrote: "This most beautiful system of the sun, planets, and comets, could only proceed from the counsel and dominion of an intelligent and powerful Being." Few people know that the man who discovered the "Laws of Motion" also wrote about God: "We must believe that he is the father of whom are all things, & that he loves his people as his children that they may mutually love him & obey him as their father."

You can copy the lab sheet below into a word processing program and use for your own experiment.

An Experiment on Light

Performed by:________________________________________

Date:_________________________________________

The Problem: What happens to light that is reflected from a mirror which is submerged in water?

The Hypothesis:

The Experiment: You will need a pan of water, a hand mirror and a piece of white paper. Place a mirror in a bowl of water so that the handle of the mirror rests on the edge of the pan and the other end rests on the bottom of the bowl. Find a pool of light on the floor of a room in your house, and place the pan in the sunlight. If you catch the light of the sun on the mirror just right, there should be a reflection on the wall. You may have to move the pan several times to get it just right. Wait for the water to become still. Place the piece of white paper in the place where the spectrum reflects and mark the results on the paper. What do you see?

Observations:

Interpretation:

Conclusion: