Family table: Light

All four rungs side by side. A younger child and an older one can do the same topic together, each at their own level.

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Step	Classes 1–3	Classes 4–7	Classes 8–10	Classes 11–12
Activity	Light and Shadows	Reflection of Light	Refraction and Lenses	Investigating Optical Phenomena
Safety	Do not shine bright light into anyone's eyes.	Do not use a laser pointer, even a toy one. Tape the mirror edges. Work in a dim room so the beam shows clearly.	Never point the lens at the Sun, never look at the Sun through it, and never leave it in sunlight: it can burn skin, start a fire and damage eyes.	School laboratory with a teacher. Use only the school's low-power laser, never point it at anyone, keep the beam below eye level, and remove shiny watches and jewellery. Never view the Sun through any optical instrument.
What you need	Torch or phone light Different objects (toy, hand, book, clear plastic bottle, butter paper, opaque box) Wall or white paper screen	Small plane mirror (with taped edges) and a lump of clay or a book to stand it up Torch, a comb or a card with a thin slit (to make a thin beam) White paper, pencil, ruler, protractor	Glass of water, pencil or straw Convex lens (magnifying glass) White paper or card, a room with a bright window (or a lamp)	School-laboratory kit for the chosen investigation (mirrors, lenses, glass block, prism, diffraction grating, spectrometer if available, low-power laboratory laser, screen)
Notice	When is a shadow formed? Look at your own shadow.	Look at yourself in a mirror. Where does the light come from and where does it go?	A pencil looks bent when placed in a glass of water. Why?	Light shows reflection, refraction, dispersion, interference and diffraction under different conditions.
Guess	What kind of objects will make a dark shadow? Which will make a faint one or almost none?	If light hits a mirror at an angle, at what angle will it bounce off?	What happens to light when it passes from air into water or through a lens?	Choose one optical phenomenon and predict quantitative or qualitative behaviour.
Try	Shine the light on different objects and look at the shadows.	Stand the mirror on the paper and draw a line along its front. Draw a line at right angles to the mirror (the normal). Shine a thin beam at the mirror where the normal meets it, and mark the path of the incoming and reflected beams with dots.	Observe the bending of a pencil in water from the side. Then, on the side of the room away from a bright window, hold the lens between the window and a white card, and move the card until a sharp image of the window appears on it.	Design and carry out a controlled investigation (e.g., focal length of a lens using 1/f = 1/v − 1/u with the sign convention your textbook uses, refractive index of a glass block, angle of minimum deviation with a prism).
Observe	Which objects make clear dark shadows? Which let some light pass through? Which let almost all the light through?	Measure the angle between the incoming beam and the normal, and between the reflected beam and the normal.	Record where the image is formed (how far from the lens) and whether it is upside down, larger or smaller. Then look through the lens at small print held close: what is different?	Collect data carefully, with repeats, and present it in tables and graphs.
Explain	Tell someone why some objects make shadows and others do not.	What rule can you state about how light reflects from a plane mirror?	Link your observations to the idea that light changes speed when it enters a different material, and changes direction if it enters at an angle.	Analyse results using relevant formulae and discuss sources of error.
Ask another question	What happens to the shadow when you move the light closer or farther?	What happens if you use two mirrors? Can you make light turn a corner, like a periscope?	How are lenses used in cameras, eyes, and spectacles?	How is this phenomenon applied in real optical instruments or natural effects (rainbows, fibre optics, etc.)?

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