The Science of Colour and Light

This resource has been designed to support your visit to Scienceworks’ Colour: See the World in a New Light exhibition. It offers pre and post-visit classroom activities and demonstrations, as well as stand-alone activities to explore and support student learning of the science of light and colour.  

The downloadable teacher guide includes 5 hands-on classroom activities that can be used to teach the science of light, along with instructions, materials lists, guiding questions and scientific explanations.

In this activity students will

• Learn that white light is made up of all the colours of the rainbow.  
• Demonstrate that light travels in a straight path and forms shadows. 
• Experiment by mixing coloured lights to understand the RGB additive colour model. 
• Learn how our eyes and brains interpret colour. 
• Apply their STEM engineering design skills.  

Suggested questions to engage students

• What happens when you separate white light?  
• What happens when we see all the colours of the rainbow spinning together really fast?  
• Are there spectrums of light that humans cannot see?  
• Why do some flowers glow under UV light?  
• What colours disappear under a red filter?  

What to do

Download the teacher resource:

• Colour Activity Guide|  2.93 MB .pdf file

This guide features five classroom activities to extend students knowledge of light and colour:

• Make your own coloured torches and explore colour mixing with light.  
• Create your own Newton's disc and watch as a rainbow transforms into white light. 
• Watch as a black texta separates into a mixture of surprising colours through a chromatography experiment.  
• Write secret messages and reveal them using coloured filters.  
• Using a UV torch go on a scavenger hunt to find natural and human-made objects that glow!