Color of Stars Properties of Dust Super Gelatin Telescope Allocation Committee Astro-Madness Delta, Delta, Delta Hot Air Spectroscope

Subject: Physical Science
Grade Level: 9-12: Integrated Physics and Chemistry (IPC), Physics, and Astronomy

Materials You Will Need
For each student team

• pen and pencil


• Laser pointer (Scientific Laser Connection)


• 2 Binder clips (office supply store)


• 1 Flat back-silvered mirror, 1/4 inch thick (Wal-Mart, Target)


• Letter size (8.5 x 11 inches) graph paper


• 1 Protractor

Guides and Worksheets
Download, print and photocopy these lesson documents for your class.

Teacher lesson plan (full color) 12.1 MB
Teacher lesson plan (b/w) 2.5 MB
Student worksheets 49 K

Overview
In this activity, students test the Law of Reflection based on experimental evidence. However, the back-silvered glass mirrors present a twist. As light travels from air into glass, it changes direction (refracts), reflects off the shiny metal back coating, then changes direction again upon emerging from the glass. The reflected ray may not match up with students' expectations, and offers them a challenge to work out what happened as the light traveled into and out of the mirror. Mirrors are everywhere: in our cars, bathrooms, shiny metal surfaces, water, and windows. Large astronomical telescopes use curved mirrors (rigid glass or polymer coated with a metal) to focus star light on to electronic detectors.

What Students Do
Students produce raw data and explanations based on their data. Their raw data are their pencil tracings of incident and reflection rays.

*TEKS are Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills. For more information, visit http://www.tea.state.tx.us/teks/.