science fair project on light and color

[suzukistudent]

Hi!
I chose to do the project on your this website called "lessons in light and color:technicolor shadows". I have already performed the experiment and it seemed a little too simple. the difficulty for this project says that is is 6-10, but it just seemed too easy. Because I have already performed the experiment, I thought that you might be able to give me a suggestion for a variation on this experiment or something similar that I could do along with this one to raise the difficulty level. If you could give me some suggestions that would be great! My project is due on February 23. It would also help if you could suggest something that used qualitive and/or quantitive data (Ithink that's something i'm supposed to have in my results). Thanks a lot. Your time is gtreatly appreciated!

[deleted-71704]

Hello,

I looked over the project, and it does seem a bit simple. I am not an expert in light, so I can see how difficult it is to come up with a quantitative way of measuring effects in this experiment. However, I do have this suggestion: look at the Variations list in the project itself to get some new ideas. Did you find that section? It has several other additional ideas, as well as links to other light-related projects. I'm sure you could find something interesting in that list. It is under the boldface subtitle "Variations" right underneath the last part of the Procedure called "Analyzing your Data."

Good luck!

[suzukistudent]

Thank you for the suggestions! I'm thinking that I will do the color filter variation along with my first experiment. What color color filters do you think would be the best to use?

[suzukistudent]

Do you think red, green, and blue would be ok? I also thought that if I overlapped them, like the red and the green, I would be able to get more colors. Do transparent plastics and colored cellophane work this way? (i.e. green overlapped with red makes yellow, green overlapped with blue makes cyan and blue overlapped with red makes magenta).

[deleted-71588]

Do transparent plastics and colored cellophane work this way?

With any translucent material (glass, plastic, gelatin, etc), some light will reflect off the incident surface, some light will refract and proceed through to the rear surface where some will reflect and some will refract and pass through. Note: some materials have vary different reflective and refracted spectrums.

In order to make a good Science Fair Project and not just a demonstration project, you need to read up on the "Scientific Method" then come up with an initial hypothesis and then refine it into something that you can actually test and measure/observe with some experiment(s).

I'm not sure what in the way of a hypothesis you can come up with to convert this particular Science Buddies project idea into something appropriate for grades 9-12 without utilizing something in the way of spectrum analysis of wave lengths and light intensities.

[suzukistudent]

Would a question like, "What colors are produced when colored light is shined through various color filters" be to much like a demonstration project?

[amyC]

Hi Everyone - I'm posting a link to the original project in question so that anyone replying can reference the original:

https://www.sciencebuddies.org/science- ... p035.shtml

Amy
Science Buddies

[deleted-71712]

Hi suzukistudent,

I think there are a couple of things going on here...

-- We aren't sure that you understand the difference between a project question and a scientific hypothesis. "What colors are produced when colored light is shined through various color filters" is a question -- something you're interested in and want to answer through the course of your work. To conduct an experiment, you need to turn this into a hypothesis. To do this, do some background reading and come up with a guess about the answer to your question based on the info you find. An example hypothesis here could be something like: "When white light is passed through red and green filters, orange light is produced." More detail here:

https://www.sciencebuddies.org/science- ... ndex.shtml

-- We aren't sure that your project is appropriate for your grade level. This is the 9-12 forum -- are you in high school? If not, no big deal, but let us know since I think this has been a source of confusion. If you're in elementary or middle school, then it sounds like you would be interested in reading about and developing a hypothesis concerning additive and/or subtractive light mixing. Resources to start:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Additive_color
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subtractive_color

If you are in high school, then I would tend to think that those ideas are a bit simplistic -- but feel free to check with your teacher. One direction you could go, in order to make the question more complex, would be to think about materials and how they interact with light to form filters, lenses, prisms, etc. For example, Craig mentioned that when light passes through a material, some is always reflected and some is always refracted, and in some materials the amount reflected vs. refracted depends significantly on wavelength. Starting references:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Optical_spectrum
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reflection_(physics)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Refraction
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Optics

Another direction (which would take you towards biology/psychology, so beware if this is for a physics class) would be to think about the perception of color. For example, violet light corresponds to a certain wavelengths, but we also see violet when blue-wavelength and red-wavelength light are mixed together. This has to do with the spectral sensitivities of the three different cones in the eye. When one type of cone is missing (dichromacy), people exhibit colorblindness; recently it has been found that some people might have four types of cones (tetrachromacy) and see things differently! Starting references:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colour_vision
http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hb ... dcone.html
http://www.cns.nyu.edu/~david/courses/p ... color.html
http://www.cambridgeincolour.com/tutori ... eption.htm
http://webvision.med.utah.edu/photo2.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tetrachromacy
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dichromacy

Amanda

[dion14]

these responses are verry good but i dont know what they mean ??? well i am new to this!!!!!!
i need help

[deleted-71712]

Hi dion14,

Did you mean to post in this thread? Are you perhaps suzukistudent posting under a new username?

If not, then I'm not sure that I understand what you're asking. Since you didn't describe a project and listed yourself as 'just getting started' in your user info, you might be interested in our project ideas:

http://www.sciencebuddies.com/science-f ... deas.shtml

If you already have a project and have a specific question about it, please create a new thread by clicking the 'new topic' button at the upper left of the main page for the appropriate forum (depending on your grade level and area of science). Then, please provide details about the progress you've made and the trouble you're having so that we can answer your questions.

Best wishes,
Amanda