Enlightening Science

Year 6 took a colourful view on things this week as they looked at the effect filters have on removing other colours of the light spectrum from white light.

They were most surprised to see how coloured objects changed shade or colour altogether and looked brown or black with the filters. However, the biggest surprise of the day was finding that if you layer transparent filters of blue, red, green and yellow over a torch – all light is stopped and it looks as if it has been turned off!

The easiest way to think about how filters work is to think of a big colour party where all the colours are present dancing. There is a ‘VIP’ room to one side manned by security guards in green suits – they only let green light through and so in the VIP room there is only green light, all the other colours are blocked and stay in the main party room. If there was another door, this time leading from the ‘green VIP’ room leading to a second, ‘even more exclusive VIP room’ with red security guards only allowing red light through. As there is only green light present, there would be very few red wavelengths of light available (if any). This would mean no light being let through so it would be dark.

Year 6 were nothing short of illuminating in their light discoveries!