Causes of Color provides you with a number of activities you can use in the classroom, as well as a variety of lesson plans. You can find more detailed information on each by clicking the links below.

One-day activities

From cabbage juice to mixing paints, check out these hands-on activities that students can do in the classroom or as homework. Each activity includes a materials list, detailed instructions, and an explanation of the scientific principles involved.

• Make a light bulb – Use copper wire in a jar and produce the incandescence that Edison perfected.
• Tiny fireworks - When students heat metallic elements in a gas flame, their photons exhibit bright characteristic colors.
• Triboluminescence - Using Wint-o-Green Life Savers and a hammer, excited electrons give off light that can be seen.
• Chemiluminescence –Demonstrate the light of glowsticks using three or four chemicals, including luminol, that students mix in a plastic cup.
• Glowing Hands - Study fluorescence by finding out what happens when you use common petroleum jelly and a black light. The ultraviolet light excites phosphors in the Vaseline.
• Iodine and starch - The phenomenon of charge transfer is seen in gemstones such as blue sapphires. Students can recreate this process using iodine and starch. Iodine produces a charge-transfer complex with starch, seen as a color change.
• Chlorophyll Chromatography – Using spinach leaves and isopropyl alcohol, students can separate the mixture that is chlorophyll into carotene and other colored pigments using filter paper.
• Organic Color Changes with Acids and Bases – Test various household substances with red cabbage juice to determine if they are acids or bases.
• Sunset in a glass - Experiment with scattering of light using a glass of milk, a colloid, to learn why the sky turns red-gold at sunset and sunrise.
• Bubbles - Create a super bubble solution and explore the bubbles to determine how they react with light.
• Spectra - Easily study the spectra of different light sources with a blank CD or DVD and some light bulbs.
• Colorblindness - A short overview of how the world looks to people who are colorblind, including a vision simulator.
• Mixing lights – To better understand how human eyes “see” color, exhibit additive mixing of colors by shining lights of three different colors against a white background.
• Mixing paints - Illustrate this subtractive process of colors while having some fun mixing different colored inks or tempera paints.

Comprehensive lessons