On this page: Waves | Sound | Light & Color | Experiments

waves

✏️ Waves from PhET. “Make waves with a dripping faucet, audio speaker, or laser! Adjust frequency and amplitude, and observe the effects. Hear the sound produced by the speaker, and discover what determines the color of light” – All

✏️ Wave interference from PhET. “Make waves with a dripping faucet, audio speaker, or laser! Add a second source to create an interference pattern. Put up a barrier to explore single-slit diffraction and double-slit interference. Experiment with diffraction through elliptical, rectangular, or irregular apertures.” – All

✏️ Wave on a string from PhET. “Explore the wonderful world of waves! Even observe a string vibrate in slow motion. Wiggle the end of the string and make waves, or adjust the frequency and amplitude of an oscillator.” – All

sound

📖 Sounds All Around by Wendy Pfeffer, a Level 1 Let’s-Read-and-Find-Out picture book, discusses sound waves, vibrations, and echolocation. – Preschool • Elementary

light & color

📖 Day Light, Night Light: Where Light Comes From by Franklyn Branley offers a fine first introduction to light, focusing on the difference between objects that create light and those that reflect it. – Preschool • Elementary

📖 Light is All Around Us by Wendy Pfeffer provides a hodgepodge of information on light and the sun. Instructions for a few simple experiments are provided at the back of the book. – Preschool • Elementary

▶️ What is light? from Kurzgesagt. “We are so used to some things that we stopped wondering about them. Like light. What is light? Some kind of wavy thing, right? Kind of.” – All

✏️ Bending light from PhET. “Explore bending of light between two media with different indices of refraction. See how changing from air to water to glass changes the bending angle. Play with prisms of different shapes and make rainbows.” – All

✏️ Color vision from PhET. “Make a whole rainbow by mixing red, green, and blue light. Change the wavelength of a monochromatic beam or filter white light. View the light as a solid beam, or see the individual photons.” – All

✏️ Blackbody spectrum from PhET. “How does the blackbody spectrum of the sun compare to visible light? Learn about the blackbody spectrum of Sirius A, the sun, a light bulb, and the earth. Adjust the temperature to see the wavelength and intensity of the spectrum change. View the color of the peak of the spectral curve.” – Middle • High

✏️ Molecules and light from PhET. “Adjust the light source slider and begin your observations of how different molecules react to different light sources.” – Middle • High

experiments

🖐️ Experiment with Sound & Light. Chatterton has many good Sound and light experiments. Sound: “Sound waves,” “String telephone,” “Pan flute,” “Dancing paper,” and “Water glass xylophone.” Light & Color: “Right or left,” “Sky and sunset jar,” “Laser maze,” and “Rainbow coloring.” – Elementary

🖐️ Experiment with Sound & Light. Awesome Physics Experiments for Kids, by Erica Colón, has a section devoted to experiments with Light (Chapter 7) and another that focuses on exploring Sound (Chapter 9). – Elementary

🖐️Experiment with Sound & Light. Physics for Every Kid by Janice Van Cleave covers experiments with Light in Chapter 10 and with Sound in Chapter 12. – Elementary

🖐️ Find Sound & Light Projects Online. At Steve Spangler Science, explore Sound with Pop Bottle Music and Musical Straws and Color with Disappearing color wheel. – All