- [Mister C] What time is it?

- [Children] It's science time.

♪ Science science science time ♪ ♪ Let's all stop and just unwind ♪ ♪ 1, 2, 3, 4 here we go ♪ ♪ Learn so much your brain explodes ♪ ♪ Lessons so cool and so fresh ♪ ♪ Beats so big you'll lose your breath ♪ ♪ Learning facts and real cool stuff ♪ ♪ Scream for more, can't get enough ♪ ♪ It's it's science time ♪ ♪ It's fun, you best believe ♪ ♪ Explore and learn new things ♪ ♪ Come and join me please ♪ - I am Mister C, and this super smart group is my science crew.

Lyla is our notebook navigator.

Alfred is our experiment expert.

Rylee is our dynamite demonstrator, and London is our research wrangler.

Working with my team is the best.

It makes learning so much fun.

Actually, you should join us!

Today we're talking about light.

What time is it?

- [Children] It's science time.

- W, X, Y, Z, A, B. I see that you are ready to be here learning with me on DIY Science Time.

My name's Mister C, and I'm so glad that you are ready to be part of our crew today.

(whip crack) Today, we're talking about light!

L-I-G-H-T.

The amazing things that we can see when we work together, you and me.

That's right, we're building spectroscopes kaleidoscopes, color wheels, and so much more.

But before we get to that, look at this message I wrote.

This is a top secret science crew message.

And only you can actually understand what it says.

- [Children] What?

- Or can you?

Do you see the message inside of all the alphabet writing that I put in there?

I have a special tool.

This is a red top secret magnifying glass.

When I put this over the letters, all of the red ink disappears, but you can see my message.

And my message says, it's Science Time, because we're gonna have some fun talking about light.

- You'll need a cardboard tube, a CD, an index card, pencils, scissors, a ruler, masking tape and most importantly, your sunny and splendid science notebook.

- A science notebook is a tool that every scientist should have.

And it gives us a place to record all of our learning.

Taking good notes and being organized allows us to be better scientists.

A science notebook allows us to go back and review all the data and information we've gathered during our experiments.

Plus it allows us to share results with other scientists who might be interested in learning more about what we've discovered.

Whenever you see the notebook pop up on the screen like this, it's a reminder that this is a good place for us to jot down new information.

You can see I've already added a title and the list of materials for today's activity.

Our crew is still going to have lots of information to collect and organize as we go through the experiment.

So keep your notebook handy.

Most importantly, the more you use the science notebook, the better you'll get at taking notes and recording data.

If you don't have a science notebook yet, download a copy of Mister C's science notebook from the website.

- This is a prism.

And a prism takes white light and it breaks it apart into the seven colors of visible light.

I think we should give it a try to see if it actually works.

So I have a flashlight here.

I'm gonna turn it on and I'm gonna put my prism onto the flashlight.

Now, oh, there it is.

(enthusiastic music) So now that we can actually see the rainbow a little bit better, what's happening is the white light is going through the prism, and as it goes through the prism it's refracted.

Which means it changes speed, and it bends.

It really changes directions.

And when this happens, the different colors of the visible spectrum bend differently, and it comes out as the rainbow.

So we see red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, and violet.

These are the seven colors of the spectrum.

So you might be saying to yourself, "Oh, that's super cool, but I don't have a prism."

Well, don't worry.

We're going to actually build something really exciting that allows you to see color bouncing off of different objects.

To build your spectroscope, you're gonna start with a paper towel roll.

You're going to measure up about eight centimeters from the bottom of your paper towel roll.

Make a 45 degree mark.

Cut about halfway through.

There we go.

We're gonna come to the opposite side and we're going to just mark a little line.

Now that line should be almost straight across and mine is, so I could literally take my mark come all the way across.

And here's where we're going to cut out a viewing hole.

Now we want it exactly on the opposite side.

So here's that.

And I'm going to just squeeze it down again.

I'm gonna cut just a small little piece in, maybe a centimeter, maybe a centimeter and a half, and I'm going to now cut another part above it.

So I have like a rectangle.

Gonna open that up.

So it's like a little window.

Cut off those little arms that popped off.

And now I have a viewing hole so that I can actually see into the spectroscope.

Now I'm gonna take my CD.

I'm going to slide it into the 45 degree cut.

Just like that.

And I'm going to put a piece of masking tape here on the bottom so that it holds the CD in place.

So now basically, I have this ability to look into this little hole.

But it's not finished yet.

So I'm gonna take an index card.

I'm actually gonna use my paper towel roll as a template.

So my paper towel roll is more like an oval, but I'm gonna cut that out.

Fold it in half, and I'm gonna cut out a little sliver, right out of the center.

And this is going to allow the light to come through.

Now, we're going to place this here on the top, just like this.

And we're gonna tape that.

And now I'm going to take some tape and I'm gonna wrap it around so that I don't allow any other light to come in.

Take my scissors, I'm gonna fold that down.

And now my spectroscope is finished.

One of the other things you can do is you can tape around on this part, the shiny part of the CD that's facing up so that when you're looking in the spectroscope, you don't see the other light, but I think this will work for now.

Ooh, I can see it already.

That's so neat.

So when I point at the light, that is amazing.

Spectroscopes allow us to see light bouncing off of different objects, and spectroscopes allow us to see how light interacts with those objects.

Point it at the TV screen.

Most importantly, point your spectroscope at all sorts of different things and get the patterns or the unique prints that those objects have as they interact with light.

Give it a try.

Light travels in straight lines.

It can be absorbed, reflected, or refracted.

We'll get to that here in the episode in just a bit, but first we need to know this.

The visible colors of light are part of the electromagnetic spectrum.

The visible spectrum is made of seven colors.

Red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, and violet.

Or sometimes we say, R O Y G B I V. And if we can look really closely at light, we can see that light travels in waves.

In fact, each color of light has a different wavelength.

The different wavelengths give each color of light, a different amount of energy.

The closer the crests are to one another, the shorter the wavelength.

Violet light has the shortest wavelength.

This means violet has the highest frequency and the most energy.

While red has the longest wavelength or the shortest frequency.

And therefore it has the lowest amount of energy.

(funny sound) That's a Fresnel lens.

The power of refraction.

This lens is refracting light.

That means the light is going in and it's changing directions and going elsewhere than where it originally was planning to go.

This also means that light is being bent.

And when we say light is being bent, it means that light is changing speed.

And when light changes speed, it changes directions.

And that is what we call refraction.

So you might not have a Fresnel lens at your house, but maybe have something like this.

This is a magnifying glass, and it's used to magnify objects, like your eye.

(funny sound) (amused laughter) Pretty cool, right?

My eye was getting bigger and smaller.

That's because as the light is leaving my eye, bouncing off of my eye, going through the lens and coming to you.

When I change the distance of this, it changes the way the eyeball looks.

But maybe you don't have one of these either, so let's build one.

We're going to build our own magnifying glass with a simple two liter bottle.

First things first, we're going to cut the top of the bottle off so that we can use it to make our lens.

(upbeat music) Now, a two liter bottle has this nice curve up here, and this is what we're going to use to actually make our lens.

So we're going to cut that part out, twice.

(upbeat music continues) There's one side, and two sides.

Now they're about the same size.

Wow, that's really close.

I'm actually going to make one of these a little bit smaller, and you'll see why here in just a second.

It's going to allow me to glue the lenses together, much more easily.

Woo.

And because this is smaller, it's going to be able to sit right down in there, just like this.

And I'll be able to, just to kind of put my finger on it and run the hot glue all the way around without moving the lens.

And that way it can dry and it can be one place.

It's a little bit safer because hot glue is hot.

And if you are using it, you should definitely work with an adult to keep your fingies safe.

So let's go ahead and use the hot glue and make a bead of glue all the way around.

(upbeat music) Gonna hold it there just for a moment, so that the hot glue can start to cool.

And it will keep my lenses in place and intact.

I still have a piece over here that I need to glue, and we're gonna run a bead almost all the way around, but we're gonna leave just a little bit of a gap.

That gap is where we are going to add our water so that we have water inside of the lens.

I can actually take my partial lens and I can put it over my Science Rocks words, but you can see right here that it's not actually doing anything.

The words look exactly the same with or without the lens on it.

So how do we fix that?

We need to add some water in the lens because when light hits water, it changes speed.

And when light changes speed, it changes directions.

And that is how this gets turned into a magnifying glass.

Let's fill it up with water and hopefully everything is sealed really good all the way around.

Ah.

So I put a lot of water in and now I'm gonna have to run a bead of glue all the way across the top of this.

And hopefully, hopefully it will seal.

So we've got a little bit of water here.

I'm gonna let this cool.

And I need to clean this up so that we can actually test our lens.

I let it cool.

I cleaned up just a little bit so I can move around and now I have a lens and let's see if it actually works.

Before when we put it on the words, it did nothing.

But look, you can already see it's bigger.

Oh, that's so cool.

And now when I lift it, (funny sound) it's a lens that works.

You don't have to have a piece of paper that says Science Rocks.

Grab a newspaper, grab a magazine, grab anything that has writing on it, a postcard, anything and then see what happens when you put a magnifying glass over it.

Science does rock!

- A lighthouse is able to shine light for miles because it uses a Fresnel lens.

A Fresnel lens creates a bright beam of light using glass prisms set in a metal frame around light.

The prisms change the direction the light is traveling, so all the light exits the lighthouse in the same direction.

The bright light is directed out to sea, so that ship captains know when to steer their ship safely away from the shore.

- Did you know that our eyes have millions of rods and cones to help us see the world around us?

Rods help us with peripheral vision and help in light and dark settings.

We also have three types of cones.

Red cones, blue cones, and green cones.

These light receptors vibrate when red, green or blue light hits them.

That vibration sends electrical pulses to our brains that are interpreted as the colors we see.

- Give this experiment a try.

Place a coin inside an empty bowl.

You should be able to see the coin, but once you push the bowl further away, the bowl blocks the light from the coin and you can no longer see the coin.

Now carefully add water to the bowl.

Can you see the coin reappear again?

If you did it correctly, you just experienced refraction.

When you begin adding water to the bowl, the light travels through the water.

However, once the light exits the water, it changes speed and bends.

This bending of the light allows you to see the coin again.

- For this next activity, we're building a kaleidoscope.

This tool allows us to explore light because a kaleidoscope allows light to reflect on the inside of it over and over and over and gives us amazing patterns that we can use and see and have fun with.

So first things first, you're going to measure the length of your tube.

So my tube is going to be 23 centimeters long.

So I'm going to measure 23 centimeters, and I'm going to cut that off.

My paper is the correct length, and I've already measured this tube and it is six and a half centimeters.

The distance that I need it to be, so I can get three lines on the inside of this.

Because what I wanna do is make a pyramid inside of it, like a prism.

So 6.5, 13, 19.5.

So 6.5, 13, 19.5.

And then I'm going to draw lines here.

So I'm gonna fold it, fold it, fold it.

And now that I have that folded nicely, I'm going to actually flip it over and fold it the other way.

Oh, I hope my folds are good.

And now, I am gonna take this little edge and I'm just going to use it, and tape it over, just like that.

So it holds everything together.

I'm gonna tape the entire length of it, but I don't want it to go into the mirror.

All right, so that is taped really well.

Now here is where we're going to put it into the tube and because I measured it, it fits perfectly.

And so we are almost there.

Now, what I'm also going to do is I have a couple of craft sticks, I forgot to mention that.

I'm gonna take the craft sticks and I'm going to tape them just so that a little bit of light can bounce underneath this.

(upbeat music continues) Perfect.

The other thing I'm going to do is I'm going to block off these gaps right here.

Just so when I'm looking into the kaleidoscope, I'm not seeing other things, and this will allow me to just see the reflection from the mirror on the inside.

There we have it.

That's pretty cool.

So now you need a pattern to look at.

And once you have a pattern, that's when the kaleidoscope and its beauty will actually pop right in your eyes.

So cool.

So you can either create a pattern for your kaleidoscope.

Use different letters or pictures, or even find a picture that you love.

Use your face, your eyes, your nose, your teeth, have fun with your kaleidoscope and put a different spin on the world that you see each and every day.

- Ever wonder how rainbows are formed?

The water vapor in the air acts like a prism and breaks apart the white light traveling through the atmosphere.

The separated light travels to your eyes, and then baboom, you see a rainbow.

But here's the deal.

In order to see a rainbow, there has to be moisture in the air.

The sun has to be shining and the sun has to be behind you.

Look for a rainbow at a fountain at the park, or grab your garden hose and try creating a rainbow in your own yard on a sunny day.

- Ultraviolet light is not a part of the visible spectrum, which means we can't see it.

But how do we know our sunglasses that say, "UV protected", really work.

Grab a few UV beads and take them outside.

The instant they are exposed to sunlight, they absorb UV light and begin to change color.

To test the effectiveness of our lens, place a few beads into a container and cover it with a protective lens.

Then take the box outside to see if the beads change color.

That means these glasses do prevent the UV light from getting into the beads.

Have fun and try testing the sunglasses for all your crew members to see if their eyes are being protected from ultraviolet light.

- And now we're gonna talk about the absorption of light with our color wheel.

That's right.

We're gonna build a color wheel that's going to do something really cool.

First things first, I'm going to trace a circle onto my cardboard.

I'm gonna trace a circle onto my paper, and now I'm gonna cut both of those out.

And I'm going to take my pencil, and I'm just going to gently sketch, trying to get it through the center and divide it into six equal parts.

So now we're going to take red, shade it, orange, yellow, blue, green, and purple.

All right.

Now I have my color wheel disc finished.

And now what we need to do is glue it onto my cardboard wheel.

So we're going to, we're gonna take some glue.

I've got a cotton applicator.

I'm just gonna put glue all over that and now place my color wheel disc onto that.

And we're going to let it dry.

Now that we have our color wheel, we can actually take this, mix all of these colors back together and see what happens.

All right.

So what we need to do is we need some string and we also need to punch some holes into this color wheel.

I'm actually going to use the DVD that I used before.

And I can see the center of it is right about there.

So my colors don't all come together, but I know that the DVD has a perfect circle in the inside.

So I'm just gonna go straight across.

Hopefully my string will be centered so that it spins properly.

I have got the two holes in there and now I need some string.

I'm gonna go with 36 inches of string.

12, 24, 36.

I'm gonna run my string through the center.

And now we're going to tie this off with a knot, pull it through and I'm gonna double knot it.

So it's nice and strong.

And now the moment of truth.

(upbeat music) All right, I'm gonna get it to spin like this, maybe.

There we go.

I'm gonna wind that up and I'm gonna spin it.

Whoa.

(gasping) It is working.

Whoa, perfectly.

(amused laughter) That is so cool.

(whooshing sound) That is awesome.

So we're taking the colors of the visible spectrum and we're literally mixing it back together, spinning it super fast and we're producing, did you see it?

Did you see the color?

It was white.

So we're taking all of those colors and we're mixing them back up and we're producing white.

It's just like this sheet of paper.

White light hits it, and all of the colors are reflected to your eyes and that's why you see white.

And when we take these colors and we mix them back together, what do we get?

White light.

So, light can be absorbed and reflect specific colors.

But when we mix it all back together, we get white light.

That is awesome.

You have to give that a try.

- I added the information about light waves and how light travels in straight lines.

I also included information about the prism and spectroscope breaking white light into the seven colors of the rainbow.

What's even cooler is that the cone receptors in our eyes allow us to see all those colors.

I wonder if that refraction experiment Rylee did works with a taller bowl or glass.

That's definitely something you should try with your crew.

- What an amazing day learning about light.

I had so much fun and I can see myself looking around the world and inspecting all things light all the time.

Using a spectroscope, using a kaleidoscope, using my spinning wheel, so much fun.

Oh, and if you haven't done it yet, download your science notebook.

Make sure you have something like this so you can take notes and keep all the information from all of your experiments.

This is what a scientist uses to keep track of things.

So you know what I want you to keep track of?

I want you to keep track of how much fun you're having, how much you're learning and what you're exploring.

And I want you to always remember that science is wherever you are.

Take care everybody.

Bye.

(upbeat music) (amused laughter) ♪ It's Science Time ♪ - And at the eight centimeter mark, at the eight centimeter mark... That's so weird by the way.

Oh, I almost forgot.

I need color pencils.

♪ It's Science Time ♪ (blowing air) - Look at that.

That's pretty good.

Voila.

It's like a pizza party.

Mm.

Pizza pie or should I say science pie?