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Eyeballing colours

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Eyeballing colours

SUBJECTS:  Science

YEARS:  7–8


Fiery red, cool blue and sunny yellow are phrases used to describe feelings associated with colours.

But what actually is colour? Why is it there and what helps us to see it?

Follow Chloe Sheridan as she unravels the complexity of seeing colour by delving into its physics and biology.

She entered this video in the 2013 Sleek Geeks Eureka Science Schools Prize competition.


Things to think about

  1. 1.Look around the room, check your clothes, play your favourite video game or look at a poster. All involve seeing colour. How do you explain why we see different colours?
  2. 2.Speaking about the physics of light, Chloe says 'colour originates in light'. How does she then describe how we perceive light from the Sun? Which colour has the longest wavelength, and which the shortest? What happens when light shines on a translucent object such as a prism? What two things might happen to light shining on an opaque object? Note the specialised structures in our eyes that contribute to our perception of colour.
  3. 3.Create a visual display that represents your ideas about 'seeing colour'. Include an explanation of the physics and biology involved. Why is it possible to see such a variety of different colours? A curly question: is it the eye or the brain that 'sees'? Did the video help your understanding of the science of seeing colour? Why or why not?
  4. 4.View the world through a red or blue filter such as cellophane. What do you see? Many kinds of animals and plants make use of colour: colour as a warning, as a means of attraction, as camouflage. Investigate an example and suggest how it affects the animal's or plant's survival. See what you can find about painters in the late 1800s who used dots of colour in their work (try the term 'Neo-impressionism').


Acknowledgements

Image credit: 'Spectral', courtesy Andreas Levers (Flickr).


Production Date: 2013


Copyright

Metadata © Australian Broadcasting Corporation and Education Services Australia Ltd 2012 (except where otherwise indicated). Digital content © Australian Broadcasting Corporation (except where otherwise indicated). Video © Australian Broadcasting Corporation (except where otherwise indicated). All images copyright their respective owners. Text © Australian Broadcasting Corporation and Education Services Australia is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License (CC BY-SA 4.0).

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