Kids Science Experiments

Light Facts

Where do Light Sources come from?

1.) Electric light bulb 2.) Candle Flame 3.) Sun and other stars

What is Light?
Our main source of light on Earth comes from the Sun.
Light is a kind of energy that can move in waves and it is made up of a flow of small particles of energy called photons. A ray of light travels very fast. The speed of light equals 300,000 km/second. Nothing else travels faster than light, not even sound! It takes just over 8 minutes for light to travel from the Sun to Earth a distance of 93 million miles.

The white light from the Sun is made up of the seven colours of the rainbow: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo and violet.

After a rain shower you can usually see a rainbow in the sky if the sun is shining. A rainbow is formed by the refraction of the sunlight in the droplets of water that are suspended in the air for the rain shower. Think of the rain drops as prisms. Dispersion by a prism shows that white light is a mixture of all the colors.

If our Earth did not have an atmosphere, the sky would be black like outer space. We would be able to see stars in our daytime like an astronaut sees stars in space.

We cannot see colors in the dark. What makes it possible for us to see colored objects is white light made up of all colors.

Atmosphere – our Earth’s atmosphere is made up of a transparent mixture of several gases surrounding our planet and held by Earth’s gravity. The mixture of these gases is known to us as air or oxygen. Our atmosphere protects our life on planet Earth by absorbing the ultraviolet solar radiation and reducing the temperature extremes for night and day.

What are the uses of Sun Light:

1.) For Energy
2.) For Warmth - Heat
3.) To see things - Light
4.) To help things grow

*** Don't look directly into the Sun as it can damage your eyes***

Kids Science Experiments - Light Facts