Example Shadows: documents

The paper opens the stage by addressing some typical students’ difficulties when trying to explain shadows produced by the Sun. The story continues with caveats on terminology and on interpretations of shadow-images, following by the short theoretical analysis of shadow produced by an extended light source. In the next part three staging variants are described: shadows produced by a point light source, shadows produced after refraction of light beam on a spherical surface and shadows produced by different coloured lights. Throughout the paper several simple experiments, ranging from demonstration to laboratory experiments are suggested and their education roles discussed. In the Appendix a spectral properties of some typical school equipment for producing coloured light is shortly presented.