Light A Science AZ Physical Series Word Count: 1,743 Light Written by Brian Roberts www.sciencea-z.com KEY ELEMENTS USED IN THIS BOOK The Big Idea: Many aspects of our lives are affected by or dependent upon light. In addition to learning about light, students may gain an appreciation for the extensive roles that light plays in their lives. Key words: absorb, color, concave, convex, peak, Earth, eclipse, electricity, energy, eye, fluorescent, frequency, gamma waves, incandescent, invisible, iris, laser, lens, light, lightning, light-year, Moon, opaque, photon, pigment, prism, pupil, radiant, radio waves, rainbow, reflection, refraction, retina, shadow, spectrum, Sun, translucent, transparent, visible, wavelength, white light Key comprehension skill: Interpret charts, graphs, and diagrams Other suitable comprehension skills: Main idea and details; compare and contrast; summarize information; identify facts; elements of a genre; classify information Key reading strategy: Ask and answer questions Other suitable reading strategies: Connect to prior knowledge; summarize; visualize; make, revise, and confirm predictions Light Light Learning AZ Written by Brian Roberts All rights reserved. www.sciencea-z.com Photo Credits: Front cover: iStockphoto.com/Sergei Popov; back cover, page 4: iStockphoto.com/ Manuela Miller; title page, pages 3, 9, 10, 11 (top left, bottom), 15, 16 (bottom left), 18 (left), 22 (left, bottom right): Jupiterimages Corporation; page 11 (top right): Ron Brown/PBase; page 12 (center): iStockphoto.com/Mageda Merbouh; page 12 (bottom): Bud Yunt; page 16 (bottom right): iStockphoto.com/Thomas Tuchan; page 17: iStockphoto.com/ Andrei Tchernov; page 18 (right): Alexandr Mitiuc/Dreamstime.com; page 19: iStockphoto.com/ Anttelinnea; page 22 (top right): iStockphoto.com/Otmar Smit Illustration Credits: Pages 5, 9, 20 (top): Casey Jones/ Learning AZ; pages 8, 16, 20 (bottom): Learning AZ; pages 6, 7, 1215, 17, 21: Sholto Ainslie/ Learning AZ 3 4 Table of Contents Introduction ...................................................... 4 What Is Light? ................................................... 5 How Light Moves ............................................ 6 Where Does Light Come From? ................... 10 How Light Interacts with Objects ................ 14 Reection ......................................................... 15 Refraction ........................................................ 17 All About Color .............................................. 21 Human Eye ..................................................... 22 Conclusion ...................................................... 23 Glossary ........................................................... 24 Index ................................................................ 24 Introduction If youve ever walked into a closet and closed the door, youve been in a world without light. Without light, we cant see. But allowing us to see things is only one important thing about light. This book will reveal many of the fascinating facts that scientists have found out about light. These facts include what it is, where it comes from, how it moves, and what happens when light strikes different surfaces. There is much more to light than meets the eye. Seen from above Earth, light from the Sun reflects off Earths oceans. 5 6 What Is Light? Light is a kind of energy. It is called radiant energy. There are many kinds of radiant energy, but light is the kind you can see. Scientists usually describe the range of energy as a spectrum. A spectrum is a series of energy bands. The diagram above shows bands of radiant energy. Visible light is only a small part of the spectrum, in the middle. On each side of visible light is invisible radiant energy. The bands on the left have less energy than the bands on the right. For example, radio waves are much less powerful than gamma waves. How Light Moves There are two ways to describe light and how it moves. The rst way is as tiny, invisible packets of energy called photons. They dont weigh anythingeven billions of them together! Photons have different amounts of energy. High-powered gamma ray photons have more energy than photons of visible light. Even in visible light, different colors of light have different amounts of energy. For example, violet light photons have more energy than red light photons. Gamma TV Microwaves Infrared Radio Waves Detail of Visible Light Ultra- violet X-ray High-Frequency Low-Frequency Short Wavelength Long Wavelength red orange yellow green blue violet Light is just one of many kinds of radiant energy. red light violet light Violet light photons have shorter wavelengths and more energy than red light photons. COMPARING COLORS OF LIGHT KINDS OF RADIANT ENERGY 7 8 The second way of describing light is as a wave. Waves are measured by their frequency, or how closely together they move. High-frequency waves travel more closely together. Low-frequency waves are spread out. More high-frequency waves than low-frequency waves will pass the same place in the same time. Scientists measure frequency by a waves wavelength. Wavelength is the distance between the peak of one wave and the peak of the wave next to it. Look at the diagram of two waves. The low-frequency wave is spread out. It has a longer wavelength. The longer the wavelength, the lower the waves energy. There are a few more things to know about lights movement. One is that it travels in straight lines. Another is that beams of light can change direction. You will read more about this in the section on how light behaves. A third thing to know about how light moves is thatunlike soundit does not need anything to travel through, such as air, water, or wood. This makes radiant energy specialit can even travel through the emptiness of space. If radiant energy could not do this, sunlight would never reach Earth. Light rays travel in a straight line through space from the Sun to Earth. WAVELENGTHS high-frequency wave low-frequency wave 9 10 Another amazing thing about light is how fast it travels. Nothing we know of is faster. Light moves 300,000 kilometers (186,000 mi.) through space in one second. This is much faster than sound. For this reason, you can see lightning several seconds before you hear its thunder. Because light travels so fast and far in space, scientists have made a special unit called a light-year. It is the distance light travels in one year. Thats about 9.5 trillion kilometers (5.9 trillion mi.)! Where Does Light Come From? There are two types of light sources natural and human-made. The most important natural source of light is the Sun. The radiant energy it sends to Earth provides many things. It is responsible for the food we eat, our weather, most of our electricity and fuel, and the warmth of our atmosphere. But the Suns heat does not travel all the way to Earth. The Sun is much too far from Earth for that to happen. Instead, Earths surface absorbs radiant energy from the Sun. Then the light changes to heat energy. The Sun is just one of many, many stars. Because the Sun is much closer to Earth than any other star, we get large amounts of energy from it. The distance from Earth to the Sun is about 150 million kilometers. Light moves at about 300,000 kilometers per second. About how long does it take light to reach Earth from the Sun? The Sun is a giant ball of energy and gases. It sends light in every direction. The Sun is the closest star to Earth, at just 150 million kilometers away. The next closest star is 4.2 light-years away. Light from Alpha Centauri travels 4.2 years to get to Earth. It would take a spaceship 80,000 years to get to that star. Earth Sun Alpha Centauri There are also sources of natural light. One example is lightning. Lightning is made of particles of air that get so hot, they create light energy. Some volcanoes produce lava that glows. And animals like reies and glowworms make light. But people wanted light when there was no natural light. So they invented ways to create light. At rst, they used campres and oil lamps. Then Thomas Edison developed the modern lightbulb. He put an electric current through a thin wire. The wire heated up and glowed. This type of lightbulb is called an incandescent bulb. Later, inventors found another way to make a lightbulb. This bulb sends electricity through a long glass tube lled with a special gas. The gas gives off invisible photons. The photons hit the inside of the glass tube, which is covered with a chemical. The chemical gives off visible light when the invisible photons hit it. We call this a uorescent bulb. 11 12 Neon lights are like uorescent lights. But neon lights use different gases than uorescent lights. These gases produce different-colored light. an incandescent bulb coating glass tube special gas cathode visible light ultraviolet light electricity FLUORESCENT BULB Lava and fireflies are two natural sources of light. 13 14 Another type of human-made light that people often use is laser light. When light is focused, it can be quite powerful. Laser light is highly focused light. Unlike light from a lightbulb, laser light does not spread out or weaken. Instead, it looks like a straight line. A laser beam is narrow and concentrated. The light is all about the same wavelength. Lasers are used to cut metal, make cuts during surgery, read images in scanners and printers, and read CDs and DVDs. How Light Interacts with Objects Light does different things when it hits different materials and surfaces. Almost all of the light goes through clear materials. Clear materials like glass are transparent. Only some light passes through things such as wax paper. These materials are translucent. Still other materials block all light. They absorb or reect all the light that strikes them. These materials are opaque. A brick wall is an opaque material. The word laser is an acronym. It stands for the rst letters of the words that describe how it is made: Light Amplication by Stimulated Emission of Radiation. no diffusion diffusion Incandescent Light Laser Light Laser light does not diffuse, or weaken, as fast as other light. Windows let almost all light through, but books block light. Translucent vases block some light waves and let others through. translucent transparent opaque A solar eclipse occurs when the Moon passes between Earth and the Sun. A lunar eclipse occurs when the Moon moves through Earths shadow. 15 16 Reection We see things because light bounces, or reects, off of them. Light that hits something smooth reects off of it at the same angle at which the light hit it. If the surface is very smooth, like a mirror, the reection looks normal. That is why a smooth, at mirror allows you to see a normal image of yourself. But if a surface is uneven, light reects in many directions. Waves seem to sparkle because the waters surface is uneven, which causes the light to reect in many directions. Because light cannot pass through opaque objects, it creates shadows. The size of the shadow depends on the distance from the light to the object and the distance from the object to the surface behind it. If a light source is close to an object, the shadow can be larger than the object, and if it is far from the object, its shadow can be small. If the object is close to the surface behind it, the shadow will be smaller than if its far away. Another thing that matters is the angle of the light. If the light is right above an object (Illustration B) it will make a small shadow. But if the light is to the side (Illustration A), the shadow can be bigger than the object itself. This is why you cast a bigger shadow when the Sun is lower in the sky. The Moon does not produce its own light. Instead, its surface reects light from the Sun. A rough surface has many angles that scatter reflected light in many directions. A smooth surface reflects light in a regular pattern. Illustration B Illustration A 17 18 Refraction When light goes from one transparent material to anotherlike from air to water it changes speed and bends. When light bends, the process is called refraction. Some materials refract light more than others. For example, light travels more slowly through water than it travels through air. Look at the photo of the spoon in a glass of water. Because the light changes speed as it moves from air to water, the spoon looks bent. Light also refracts when it goes through transparent lenses. The diagrams above show what happens when light goes through a convex lens or a concave lens. All About Color Light has many colors. Most visible light has many colors of light in it. When light has all the colors in it, we call it white light. You cant see the colors of light until they are reected or refracted to your eyes. Sunlight and light from lightbulbs send out white light. You can see the colors of light by sending light through a prism. The prism refracts the light and separates its colors into a rainbow. Each color of light bends slightly differently than the others. Raindrops can act as prisms. They can refract sunlight into the colors you see in a rainbow. The different speeds of light through water and air make the spoon look bent. convex lens concave lens Raindrops act like prisms they refract white light into bands of color. LENSES Convex lenses focus light, and concave lenses spread light out. When an object absorbs all colors of light and reects no color, it looks black. Something that looks white reects all colors and absorbs none. Black surfaces absorb more light energy than white surfaces. The light they absorb turns into heat energy. So black surfaces will get warmer than white surfaces when the same light hits them. Just like paint, colored light can be mixed to make new colors of light. But all the colors of light mixed together make white, not black. 19 20 Pigments cause things to be a certain color. Pigments are materials that absorb some colors of light and reect others. A ripe tomato looks red because it has red pigment. This pigment absorbs all the colors except red. Red light gets reected. An unripe tomato would have green pigment. It would absorb red light and only reect green. The color would let you know to pick a different tomato. Paints are pigments that are put on the surfaces of objects. Mixing pigments can create a variety of colors. The three primary pigments are red, blue, and yellow. They can be combined to make any other color. The red tomato absorbs all but red light, and the green tomato absorbs all but green light. green light reflected red light reflected MIXING PIGMENTS red orange purple black yellow green blue All colors of light together make white. MIXING LIGHT red yellow purple (magenta) white green light blue (cyan) blue 21 22 Human Eye Your eyes are like cameras. They collect light that your brain interprets as pictures. Like a camera, each eye has a small opening that light goes through. This is called the pupil. Your eyes also have a colored circle around the pupil called the iris. The iris controls the amount of light that enters the pupil. Light entering the pupil goes through a clear, convex lens. The lens focuses the light on light-sensitive tissue at the back of the eye. This tissue is called the retina. It sends a signal to the brain. Your brain turns the signal into what you see. Conclusion You have learned that light is energy. It can travel through space. Light does some amazing things, such as bending, refracting, reecting, and being absorbed, and it does these things very fast. Because it can do all these things, we see the world the way we do. The lens of the eye focuses light on the retina, which sends a signal to the brain. Light helps our food grow, powers our homes, and does more amazing things. What can you do with light? iris retina optic nerve image pupil lens 23 24 Glossary concave lens a lens that is wider at the edges than in the middle and that refracts light rays so they bend outward (p. 17) convex lens a lens that is wider in the middle than it is at the edges and that refracts light rays so they come together (p. 17) uorescent a lightbulb in which electricity bulb goes through a gas that reacts with a chemical inside the bulb to make light (p. 12) frequency the number of waves that pass a point in a specic length of time (p. 7) incandescent a lightbulb in which electricity bulb passes through a wire, which heats up and produces light (p. 11) light-year a unit that is the distance that light travels in one year (p. 9) opaque blocking all light from passing; not see-through (p. 14) photon the smallest particle of light energy (p. 6) pigments substances that give color by reecting some colors of light and absorbing other colors of light (p. 19) reection the return of light as it bounces off something (p. 15) refraction the bending of light waves when they pass from one kind of matter to another (p. 17) retina a layer of light-sensitive cells at the back of the eye (p. 21) spectrum the range of radiant energy, arranged in order of energy or wavelength (p. 5) translucent allowing some light through; images are distorted (p. 14) transparent allowing all light through; images are not distorted (p. 14) wavelength the distance between two consecutive peaks or troughs of a wave (p. 7) white light all the colors of light mixed together (p. 18) Index color, 6, 12, 1821 eclipse, 16 human-made light, 1013 lasers, 13 lenses, 17, 21 speed of light, 9, 17 Moon, 15, 16 natural light, 10, 11 prism, 18 Sun, 4, 810, 15, 16, 18