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  • Light and Color: I Wonder Why

    NSTA Press Book | June 2014

    This book unfolds as a series of observations about light, including where it comes from, how it bounces off of people and objects, and what we mean when we say the colors of a rainbow are the colors in light.…

  • Seeing The Light

    Journal Article | January 2023

  • A Light Challenge

    Journal Article | January 2021

  • Shining a Light

    Journal Article | November 2022

  • Understanding Light

    Book Chapter | September 2010

    Predict, Observe, Explain (POE) sequences provide an important way to enhance students' understanding of important scientific ideas. In this chapter, the series of experiments help students understand light. The…

  • The Speed of Light

    Book Chapter | March 2011

    This activity is designed to help students understand that light does have a finite speed and that this has consequences for us. In order to grasp the meaning of the activity, it is important for students to understand…

  • The nature of light

    Book Chapter | December 2005

    Light plays such a crucial role in our lives that it’s very hard to imagine a universe without light. But what is light? How do we describe its behavior? We have two basic models that we can use to describe light—…

  • Northern Lights

    Book Chapter | February 2017

    In this lesson, a boy is worried that his new home in Alaska cannot possibly have warm weather in the summer. Key words and concepts covered are seasons and motion of Earth around the Sun. Crosscutting concepts explored…

  • A Light in the Dark

    Book Chapter | February 2018

    In this problem, students investigate how to construct a simple circuit from a battery, flashlight bulb, and items that might be found in someone’s pocket. Teams of students engineer a simple flashlight using a…

  • Lighting It Up!

    Book Chapter | November 2019

    In this lesson, students explore the concept of light through interactive read-alouds, viewing videos, and an inquiry activity in which they investigate how light interacts with various materials. We recommend reading…

  • Light and Reflection

    Book Chapter | May 2019

    The guiding question of this investigation is, What is the relationship between the location of an object and the location of its image in a mirror? In this lesson, the goal is to figure out how to predict where an…

  • Light to See

    Book Chapter | May 2019

    This activity is about discovering that our eyes need light to see and in order for something to be seen, we need light. The activity works best on a cloudy day when not much sunlight is lighting the room, but make your…

  • Online Extra: I Wonder Why: Light and Color

    Page | March 2020

    Online Extra: I Wonder Why: Light and Color If you have purchased I Wonder Why: Light and Color, you can view the accompanying extra activity online. This resource is for your personal use only and is not to be redistributed. To view the online extra, please type in the second word in the body text on the very last page…

  • Lighting Up History

    Journal Article | April 2021

  • Light Year as Distance

    Book Chapter | March 2011

    Students, in this activity, measure distances by walking heel-to-toe in the unit “student minute.” This is to gain an intuitive under¬standing of light years, a unit in which time represents distance.

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