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Benchmark #: SC.7.P.10.2

Observe and explain that light can be reflected, refracted, and/or absorbed.

Information

General Information

Subject Area: Science
Grade: 7
Body of Knowledge: Physical Science
Idea: Level 3: Strategic Thinking & Complex Reasoning
Big Idea: Forms of Energy -

A. Energy is involved in all physical processes and is a unifying concept in many areas of science.

B. Energy exists in many forms and has the ability to do work or cause a change.
Date Adopted or Revised: 02/08
Content Complexity Rating: Level 3: Strategic Thinking & Complex Reasoning - More Information
Date of Last Rating: 05/08
Status: State Board Approved
Assessed: Yes

Lesson Plans

  • Light, Light, Light Up the Night Students will be working through a lesson pertaining to a 7th grade standard that allows for students to observe that light is reflected, refracted, and or absorbed.
  • Trick or Science: Catching the Light In this lesson, students will be able to observe, explain, and model reflection and refraction through a series of inquiry light stations. Students will engage and perform different challenges to obtain knowledge about how light reflects off of surfaces and how light is refracted when changing mediums.
  • Reflect It, Refract It, or Asorb It While working in groups, students will be provided various materials to design models that illustrate the refraction, reflection, and absorption of light.
  • 5E Refraction Inquiry Lab In this lesson plan students learn about the property of light: refraction. The lesson begins with an engage demo placing a pencil in a glass of water. The students will be able to witness the effects of refraction. After answering a few questions the students are split into partners for the explore portion of the lesson. The students place a penny on the bottom of an opaque cup then step back until they cannot see the penny. The partner then slowly pours water into the cup until the penny comes into site (record data). The teacher leads the class in a classroom discussion about their findings. The teacher then explains what refraction is and why it happens. For the elaborate portion of the lesson students are asked to explain how to spearfish from a riverbank. There is a short quiz for the summative assessment.
  • Reflecting on Color Students will review the main interactions of light followed by a short investigation to understand how matter gets its color.
  • Basement in the Night This lesson focuses on the standards that require students to understand:
    • What is light and how does it travel?
    • What is color and how do we see specific colors?
    In this lesson students will participate in an observation activity that involves the teacher becoming the boogie man and wearing a specific colored cape. The students will observe the boogie man ( the teacher ) in the room without any sunlight or light from other sources on. Then class will complete a formative assessment using four corners and end the class with a exit slip as a summative.
  • Feeling the Heat?? In this lesson students will investigate how the various surfaces have different albedo values. Students will analyze the difference between radiation, conduction, and convection, the three mechanisms by which heat is transferred through Earth's system. Students will engage in collecting data, graphing their measurements, and presenting their findings to the class.
  • Saving the Veggies! In this Model-Eliciting Activity (MEA), students will have to determine which type of panel to choose for a fictitious greenhouse - glass or plastic and how much light, heat and moisture is best to let in - determined by whether the material is opaque, translucent or transparent. Students exploring how light travels, how heat moves and how it all affects temperature will find this activity fun and exciting. This is a fun challenge but applicable also to the environmental demands we are currently facing. Model Eliciting Activities, MEAs, are open-ended, interdisciplinary problem-solving activities that are meant to reveal students’ thinking about the concepts embedded in realistic situations. MEAs resemble engineering problems and encourage students to create solutions in the form of mathematical and scientific models. Students work in teams to apply their knowledge of science and mathematics to solve an open-ended problem while considering constraints and tradeoffs. Students integrate their ELA skills into MEAs as they are asked to clearly document their thought processes. MEAs follow a problem-based, student-centered approach to learning, where students are encouraged to grapple with the problem while the teacher acts as a facilitator. To learn more about MEAs visit: https://www.cpalms.org/resource/mea.aspx
  • Stations of Light Student groups rotate through four stations to examine light energy behavior: refraction, magnification, prisms and polarization.
  • Why is the sky blue? Students explore how light and sound waves travel in different materials.
  • Kickin' It Solar Style This investigation explores the effect of distance and albedo on energy absorption.
  • Light Reactions The purpose of the experiment is to predict and observe how light reacts to different objects using three different light sources. Predictions will be recorded and then each item will be tested with each light source to determine if the prediction is correct. Discussion will follow why or why not a certain reaction occurred and if it can be seen in other circumstances.
  • The Refraction of Light Students will be able to describe the refraction of light.

    Content statement
    Refraction is the bending of a light's path as it moves through one medium to another.

Original Student Tutorial

  • How Light Interacts Light can be reflected, refracted or absorbed. Learn how light interacts as it strikes various objects in this interactive tutorial.

Perspectives Video: Professional/Enthusiasts

Teaching Idea

  • Disappearing Glass Rods In this demonstration, cooking oil and glass rods are used to demonstrate the refraction of light.

Tutorial

  • Speed of Light in Transparent Materials
    • Study the relation between the speed of light and the refractive index of the medium it passes through.
    • Choose from a collection of materials with known refractive indices and obtain the speed of light as it passes through.

Virtual Manipulatives

  • Law of Angle of Reflection This is an interactive graphic that visually represents the law of angle of reflection. Users may select a wavelength to change the color of the light and can also set the angle of reflection.
  • Refraction of Light This resource is a virtual manipulative that allows the user to change the angle of incidence of light and select from a variety of materials, each of which has a different index of refraction, to demonstrate how light may be refracted.

Collections

STEM Lessons - Model Eliciting Activity

  • Saving the Veggies! In this Model-Eliciting Activity (MEA), students will have to determine which type of panel to choose for a fictitious greenhouse - glass or plastic and how much light, heat and moisture is best to let in - determined by whether the material is opaque, translucent or transparent. Students exploring how light travels, how heat moves and how it all affects temperature will find this activity fun and exciting. This is a fun challenge but applicable also to the environmental demands we are currently facing. Model Eliciting Activities, MEAs, are open-ended, interdisciplinary problem-solving activities that are meant to reveal students’ thinking about the concepts embedded in realistic situations. MEAs resemble engineering problems and encourage students to create solutions in the form of mathematical and scientific models. Students work in teams to apply their knowledge of science and mathematics to solve an open-ended problem while considering constraints and tradeoffs. Students integrate their ELA skills into MEAs as they are asked to clearly document their thought processes. MEAs follow a problem-based, student-centered approach to learning, where students are encouraged to grapple with the problem while the teacher acts as a facilitator. To learn more about MEAs visit: https://www.cpalms.org/resource/mea.aspx

Original Student Tutorials Science - Grades K-8

  • How Light Interacts Light can be reflected, refracted or absorbed. Learn how light interacts as it strikes various objects in this interactive tutorial.
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