Learn about light, color and how we see colors by spinning a top with a color wheel that you create to combine colors, then create your own top!
- Study Sir Isaac Newton’s discovery of the spectrum of light.
- Investigate the light frequencies of color, how colors are seen and interpreted, and how reflection and refraction affect light transfer.
- Learn how the primary colors combine to create all other colors.
- Learn how water droplets diffuse light to create rainbows.
- Learn about the history and meanings of rainbows in various cultures and create your rainbow story.
- Experiment with prisms, as did Newton, to understand how colors compose white light.
- Experiment with spinning tops to demonstrate how colors combine to create additional colors and be challenged to create the colors of the “color wheel.”
- Learn the physics of spinning tops.
- Design and build a unique top based on concepts that include tops of various geometric and symmetrical shapes, whistling tops, and tops that flip while spinning.
- For grades 5th to 8th.
- Approximately 8 to 10 contact hours.
Individually packaged kit has all parts and materials to build your spinning top model and conduct experiments. Assembly instructions, project curriculum, video design tutorials and supplemental resources are provided. Includes fabrication and shipping of one design file using the Invent2Make Makerspace.
Click here for your free, seven-day access to instructional materials.
Click here for information regarding educator Professional Development for the Colors of the Rainbow project.