Light - Science March 2021

Date: 5th Mar 2021 @ 2:49pm

Our first Science unit in the spring term was ‘Light’. At first, we thought about what light was and where it comes from. We then realised that a light source could be natural or man-made and classified sources of light into these groups. We learnt that light travels in straight lines.

Next, we looked at the difference between a light reflector and a light source. We investigated what materials or objects in our environment were light reflectors. The children on remote learning went for walks and searched around the home to find everyday objects that reflect light. This ranged from reflectors on trainers to the reflective material spotted on street signs during night time dog walks!

We then used the knowledge we had gained in our materials unit in Y2 regarding whether an object was transparent, translucent or opaque. We found and sorted objects into these categories and then moved onto investigating how much light each object would allow to pass through. For our remote learners, they measured the length of the beam of light using alternative units of measure such as pasta twists or Lego blocks!

Once we understood why light cannot pass through certain materials, we started to learn about what a shadow is and how they are created. We began to investigate what affects the darkness of a shadow by shining light through transparent, translucent and opaque objects. Once we understood that opaque objects totally block the light and so create the darkest shadows, we began to look at the shape, size and movement of shadows. We did this by changing the distance between the object and the light source and measuring the size of the shadow produced. Remote learners recorded the changes in photographic form.

In art, we took a closer look at the shadows that are all around us and took photographs of what we found. We really enjoyed the amount of practical investigations that we did in this unit!