Lesson 1

The Nature of Light

What I need to Know
What’s New: Observing a Ball’s Path at Different Speed
What is it: The Corpuscular and Wave Theory of Light
What’s More: Exploring How Light Travels
What I Have Learned: Sharing my Insights
What I Can Do: Reflecting Me.
What I Know. Multiple Choice. Select the letter of
the best answer from among the given choices.
1. Which of the following phenomena
describes the difference between the wave
theory and particle theory of light?
A. diffraction B. interference
C. reflection D. refraction
2. Which factor remains constant when light
travels in a different medium?
A. Color B. Frequency
C Speed D. Wavelength
3. Why does a blue t-shirt appear blue?
A. Blue is absorbed by the t-shirt
B. Blue is emitted by the t-shirt
C. Blue is reflected by the t-shirt
D. Blue is refracted by the t-shirt
4. E=hf is an equation that describes the
relationship between energy (E) and
frequency of light (f). What will happen to the
energy of light as the frequency goes higher?
A. goes higher
B. goes lower
C. remains the same
D. undetermined
5. Under which type of light do we easily get
sunburned?
A. infrared B. microwave light
C. ultraviolet light D. white light
6. He formulated the hypothesis that electron
being a particle has wave-like characteristics.
A. Albert Einstein B. Max Plank
C. Louis de Broglie D. Neils Bohr
7. Which property of light is responsible for
white clouds, blue sky and red sunset?
A. Dispersion B. Scattering
C. Interference D. Diffraction
8. What natural occurrence is produced by
the refraction of light as it travels between hot
and cold air? A. mirage B. myriad
C. virtual image D. real image
9. Which of the following situations
exemplifies the dispersion property of light?
A. The image of the flower in a mirror
B. The sparkling glow of the diamond ring
C. The swaying movement of coin under
water
D. The rainbow in the sky after the
rain shower
10. Explain when can diffraction of light occur?
A. When photons oscillate in certain directions are
absorbed, while others that oscillate in line with the filter
pass through.
B. when light strikes the boundary between substances at
an angle greater than the critical angle.
C. when waves spread and bend as they pass through
small openings or around barriers.
D. when two or more waves overlap or intersect.
11. What effect does interference of light waves have on
soap bubbles?
A. They become larger
B. They become heavier
C. They produced different colors at the surface.
D. They produced images of objects like a mirror.
12. After a rainstorm, a rainbow may appear in the sky. Which
statement explains this observation?
A. The colors of the rainbow come from raindrops spread in the
atmosphere
B. The raindrops act as prisms separating sunlight into spectrum
of colors.
C. The white clouds are like prisms which are composed of
different colors of the rainbow
D. When the incident light is reflected by the ground towards the
clouds, it separates them into different colors.
13. What light phenomena results in a spectrum of colors
that escapes when two reflections happened inside the
water droplets?
A. A primary rainbow
B. A secondary rainbow
C. A supernumerary bow
D. D. A Halo
14. The reason why Hertz used the same length of wire from
CA to CB. I. The voltage reached at the same direction. II.
The voltage reached at the same point. III. The voltage
reached at the same time.
A. I only
B. I and II only
C. II and III only
D. III only
15. Hertz’s observation on his experiment. I. When sparks
flew across the main gap, sparks flew across the secondary
gap. II. When sparks flew across the main gap, sparks
stopped across the secondary gap. III. When sparks flew
across the main gap, secondary gap do not ignite.
A. I only
B. I, II and III
C. II and III only
D. III only
Lesson 1 The Nature of Light
What is light? Is it matter or is it energy?
Do you think it is a particle or a wave? For
hundreds of years, scientists disagreed on
the nature of light. In this lesson you will be
able to describe how the propagation of light,
reflection, and refraction are explained by the
wave model and the particle model of light.
What’s New Activity 3.2.1 Observing a Ball’s
Path at Different Speeds (1 point
each)
Find a space in your yard where
you can safely play a ball. Face a wall,
boundary or fence at about two meters
away from it. Throw the ball slowly. How
will you describe the trajectory path of the
ball? Record your observation in the table
below. Throw the ball again but his time
do it very fast. Complete the table.
What Is It
At slow speeds, a curvature of a thrown
ball was easily observed because of the effect
of gravity but at high speeds the ball is
inclined to follow a straight line. According to
Sir Isaac Newton, light travels in straight lines,
thus its particles must move at very high
speeds.
 Light can travel straight
through empty space (vacuum) until
it hits something else. Once it has
hit another surface or particle, it is
either absorbed, reflected
(bounces off), refracted (direction
and speed changes), scattered
(bounce-off in all directions) or
transmitted (passes straight
through) as seen in Figure 1.
But is light a wave or a particle?
The Corpuscular (particle) Theory-Newton’s Theory
According to the theory, Newton thought that light is
made up of particles that travel through space on a
straight line.
 Reflection is the bouncing of light as it hits
a surface. Newton demonstrated that
particles collide with the surface and bounce
back (see figure a).
 Refraction is the bending of light. It is
an attraction between the molecules of
the medium and the particles of light
which contribute to the change of speed
as the particles of the light travels inside
the medium (see figure c)
 Diffraction is the bending of light as it
passes around the edge of an object.
Newton felt that light does not travel
around corners. He explained that any
observed effect of this is caused by the
interaction of particles when they run
into each other at the edges of the
objects.
 Dispersion is the separation of light
into colors. Newton explained that
particles of different mass would be
affected differently when refracted.
Wave Theory of Light
Christian Huygens, a Dutch physicist, argued that if
light were made of particles, when light beams
crossed, the particles would collide and cancel each
other. He proposed that light was a wave like that of
water waves.
 Huygens’ Principle – each point on a wave, behaves as
a point source for waves in the direction of wave motion.
Huygens’ wave model of light explains reflection, refraction,
and diffraction of light
  Reflection happens
when light bounces off an
object. Upon hitting a
smooth surface as
illustrated in figure b, light
would be reflected. The
waves would bounce
back, producing a
reversed image of the
wave.
  Refraction – is the bending of wave when it enters a medium where
its speed changes. In figure d, the wavefront approaches the two media
with different densities. Since the incident wave is travelling as an angle,
a small portion of the wavefront starts to slow down upon impact to the
boundary while the rest are maintaining their speeds. This condition
makes the wavefront bend while entering the second medium with
higher density.
  Diffraction is the slight bending of light as
it passes around the edge of an object which
depends on the relative size of the wavelength of
light to the size of the opening. Light is a particle, a
wave or both depending on the phenomenon.
 The teacher will try to access the interactive
simulation from PhEt. The simulation can be
assessed in this link:
https://phet.colorado.edu/sims/html/wave-interf
erence/latest/wave-interference_en.html
Lesson 2
Energy of Light
What In
What I Need to Know
What’s New: Arranging Rainbow Colors
What Is It:
What’s More: Spotting Similarities and Difference
What I Can Do: Matching Perfectly
Lesson 2
Energy of Light
What In
What I Need to Know
What’s New: Arranging Rainbow Colors
What Is It:
What’s More: Spotting Similarities and Difference
What I Can Do: Matching Perfectly
Lesson 2 What’s In
Light may behave as a particle, a wave
or both depending which light phenomenon.
To scientists, colors of things are not
substances of the things themselves, but the
frequencies of light emitted or reflected by
things.
What I Need to Know
In this lesson, you will be able to explain
how the photon concept and the fact that the
energy of a photon is directly proportional to
its frequency can be used to explain why in
photographic dark rooms red light is used,
why in ultraviolet light but not in visible light
we get easily sunburned, and how we see
colors.
What’s New Activity 7.2.1 Arranging Rainbow
Colors
Open your Facebook app. Type visible light spectrum on the
search bar. Go through the resources and observe the frequencies
and energies of the different colors. Arrange the colors according to
increasing frequency and increasing energy in the table below.
What Is It
Newton thought that light was made of
particles (corpuscles) that emanated from the light
source. Light can be described as a quanta or
packet of energy that behaves as if they were
particles. Light quanta are called photons. The
photoelectric effect introduced evidence that light
showed particle properties. Photons are emitted
when electrons of an atom are excited.
 When light is shown on an atom, its
electrons absorb photon which causes them to
gain energy and jump to a higher level. Since an
electron can only exist at certain energy levels, it
can only emit photons of certain frequencies.
The emitted light can be perceived as a series of
colored lines called a line or atomic spectra.
Each element produces a unique set of spectral
line.
 The electromagnetic spectrum depict all of the
types of light, including those that we cannot see
in our own eyes. In fact, most of the light in the
universe is invisible to humans.
The light we can see, made up of the individual colors of the rainbow,
represents only a very small portion of the electromagnetic spectrum.
It is called visible light. Other types of light include radio waves,
microwaves, infrared radiation, ultraviolet rays, X-rays and gamma
rays — all of which are imperceptible to human eyes.
 The relationship between energy and frequency is given by the
equation E = hf, here h is 6.63 x10-24 joules-second called as
Planck's constant. A direct relationship exists; electromagnetic
radiation is more energetic with a higher frequency.

Why do we get easily sunburned in ultraviolet light but not in

visible light? The sun is a source of the full spectrum of the
ultraviolet radiation which is responsible for causing us
sunburn. This UV light has higher frequency than visible
light, therefore it has higher energy.
Why is red light used in photographic darkrooms? Darkrooms used
red lighting to allow careful control light to pass through, so that
photographic paper which is light sensitive would not become
overexposed that will result to ruining the pictures during the developing
process. Red light in the visible region of the spectrum has the lowest
frequency and lowest energy and therefore it does not affect the photo
developing process.
How do we see colors? Visible light is a small part within the spectrum
that human eyes are sensitive to and can detect. It is of different
frequencies and each frequency is a particular color. Objects appear in
different colors because they absorb some colors and reflect or transmit
the others. White objects appear white because they reflect all colors.
Black objects absorb all of them, so no light is reflected.
 TYPE APPLICATIONS LIFE SCIENCE ISSUES
ASPECT
RADIO Communications and MRI (Magnetic Requires control for
remote controls Resonance Imaging) band use
MICROWAVES Communications, Deep heating Cell phone use
ovens, radar
INFRARED Thermal imaging, Absorbed by the Greenhouse effect
heating atmosphere
VISIBLE LIGHT All pervasive Photosynthesis,
human vision
ULTRAVIOLET Sterilization, cancer Vitamin D production Ozone depletion,
control cancer causing
X-RAYS Medical security Medical diagnosis, Cancer causing
Cancer therapy
GAMMA RAYS Nuclear medicine, Medical diagnosis, Cancer causing,
Security caner therapy radiation damage

Life and Electromagnetic Waves

Lesson 1
The Nature of Light
What I need to Know
What’s New: Observing a Ball’s Path at Different Speed
What is it: The Corpuscular and Wave Theory of Light
What’s More: Exploring How Light Travels
What I Have Learned: Sharing my Insights
What I Can Do: Reflecting Me.