Start your understanding of the wonders of light by investigating how it travels and bends.

Light experiment:  Reflections Download the pdf here

Light Experiment: Reflections

What you will need:

Spoons, shiny metal ones.

What you will do:

1.  Stand in a well lit room or outside. Hold the spoon by the handle just like you would when you are eating, but flip it over so that the back of the spoon is facing you. Look at yourself in the curved end, what do you look like?

2. Now turn the spoon so that the back of the spoon is still facing you but the curved part is pointing at the ceiling or sky. Have another look at yourself.

3 Next, turn the spoon over and look at yourself in the front of the curved part where the food normally goes. What do you see?

What is going on?

The shiny spoon is like a mini mirror, but with a curve in it. The front of the spoon is a CONCAVE surface, and the back is a CONVEX surface.

Light that goes into a normal mirror bounces back in a straight line, so you see yourself as you are, but reversed. Light that goes onto a convex surface is bent out as it bounces back, the more curved the surface, the more the light is bent. This is why the image you see is changed from the real you.

When light bounces off a concave surface it is bent inward. If it is bent enough it can cross over itself, making the image appear upside down!

Monster Challenges

Repeat the experiment with spoons of different sizes and shapes, away from the spoon. How do your results change? Also, try getting closer and further. Can you get an image that is right way up from a concave surface?