- Light sources can be natural or humanly constructed. For example, the sun is a light source, but so is a light bulb.
- Light is made up of all the colors mixed. For example, white light can be split up to reveal red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, and violet. A prism is an object that can break up white light to show the different colors that it’s made up of. Isaac Newton was the scientist who studied this and realized that light was made up of lots of different colors.
- Things appear in a specific color because it’s the only reflected color. For example, a red car is red because it absorbs all other colors except red. Likewise, black objects absorb all colors, and white objects reflect all colors.
- Light is a beam of energy. It travels in wavelengths.
- Light is measured in wavelengths on the electromagnetic spectrum. This spectrum includes all the different types of light and other types of waves too.
- The light humans can see only takes up a tiny portion of the electromagnetic spectrum, called visible light. Insects and other animals can see more than we can, which means they can see different colors that we can’t even imagine!
- Plants turn light from the sun into food. This process is called photosynthesis.
- There are many different types of energy, but light is the only energy we can see with our eyes.
- We see rainbows because the water droplets in the air cause the light to be split up into the colors it’s made from – just like a prism.
- Animals that only come out at night when it is dark are called nocturnal animals. They include badgers and owls.
- The study of light is called optics and is a vital physics subject in science.
- If you traveled at the speed of light, you could travel around the Earth 7.5 times every second!
- In England, there is a law called the ‘right to light.’ It says that if someone has had natural light coming into their building for more than 20 years, they have a right to stop anything being built in the way and stop the natural light from coming through.
- Thomas Edison was an American scientist who invented the lightbulb.
- Refraction is when light waves bend after passing through different materials. This is because their speed is affected. For example, water makes light travel slower than it travels through the air. This can make objects underwater appear bent.
- The northern lights display colored lights in the sky over the north pole. They are caused by energy from the Sun interacting with gases surrounding the Earth.
- The Moon reflects light from the Sun, which is why we can see it at night.
- You can see lightning before hearing thunder because light travels faster than sound. So the sound of thunder is the sound of the lightning hitting the Earth – it’s just delayed.
- Light is needed for modern technology, including laser beams, printers, microscopes, cameras, and fiber-optic cables.
- Sunlight can reach a depth of about 80m in the ocean!
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