Teaching Conceptual Optics in the Classroom

Back in the 1990s, I saw several classes listed for kids at the Lawrence Hall of Science, and a school wanted a science unit for GATE (in Alexander Valley), so I created an arts based optics class combining several class write ups from the LHS...which was wildly popular... I taught it for years evey spring.

I never quite teach it the same way twice, I guess I'm teaching conceptual optics with a K as in Newton's Opticks. I have a certain, if vague fondness for Max Planck, Heisinger, and we can't forget Schrodinger's cat! I once held a letter Einstein wrote, after the Bonb, and I had a a 2nd cousin who worked on the Manhatttan Project—the math gene skipped me. And my grasp of physics is challenged but I can show how scientific questioning and hypotheses are related to artisitc inquiry.

It all started one day when I was throwing light around the room with prisms, and as we looked at the rainbows on the ceiling. a kindergartener asked me quite seriously, "Are you a magician?"

I often start with the EM scale and show kids where visual light lives on it. Such a narrow band. Then we explore and create a variety of optical illusions. Benhan rings, eye fatigue; we view an upside down world with magnifying glasses, we look at the retina as mirror (and that pesky flaw in the mirror, the optic nerve that forces the brain to create illusions like hotdog fingers), concave and convex (camera) lenses, we use fishing line sculpture for fiber optics, etc.

We make Dame Edna glasses, with one red and one green celluloid lens, color in geometric shapes, make contrasting color collages and look at them vibrate. Very 1960s acid trip kind of thing...the kids are all wandering around looking at the world with rose and green colored lenses, exclaiming, "Oh WOW!" it's a real scream. Sadly, I can no longer get celluloid, I'm eeking out my last few scraps (from Australia). Plasticwrap doesn't work. Can't see thru it.

We also do some really basic examination of eye structure, with partners, mirrors and flashlights...talk abiut how humans and other creatures see, and what colors we see vs. spiders & dogs. I show them how cyan, magenta and yellow dye can make every color. The main thing is that kids have fun while exploring a tiny portion of the optic realm.

We chase rainbows with prisms, CDs, crystals, Calistoga water bottles (the indentations throw rainbows) and bubbles. I've found that feather and snakeskin both have prismatic qualities. One final project is to throw sunlight at a right angle and create rainbows on a shadowed wall.

I think what got me interested in this originally was that when Newton's Opticks was published, it spawned a revolution in art and poetry...people had a new relationship to color and light. And I'm an artist and poet... I've a KQED SPARK grant at Cleveland ES during the day (painting on silk—see it's not paint, as in pigment but dye which stains the fiber—back to physics again). This is just extra. I'm still learning as I go.