Disappearing Beaker

Confession: Even though we haven't officially started homeschooling yet this year, three of my students are doing some schoolwork in the mornings if they are not helping me pack. (Moving vans are arriving this weekend, so we will probably forget about school again.)

Mr. D is evaluating a new science curriculum this month: Supercharged Science. He is working on the first unit on Mechanics, but also looking around the website for an overview of the material. He came across this light experiment on Disappearing Beaker, and decided to try it one morning (since we had all three ingredients needed: a pyrex dish, a bigger see-through dish and cooking oil.)



(If you look around, you can see how the rooms are getting empty and you might spot a box or two, although I do try to block messy backgrounds when I can :)




Very cool!!! Mr. D was able to bend the light to make the beaker disappear (harder to tell in the photo). Aurora from Supercharged Science writes:

"Pyrex has the same index of refraction as the oil, which means your eye can’t tell the difference between the two visually because passes through both the same way...

As the index of refraction value increases, the optical density increases, and the speed of light in that material decreases. For a vacuum, the index of refraction is 1.0000 (lowest optical density), and this is where light travels fastest. The index of refraction values give us a way to measure of the relative speed of a light wave in a particular material or medium. If we know the relative speeds, we can predict which way light bends when moving from one medium to another."

So far Mr. D has enjoyed his Supercharged Science lessons, we'll see if this is what we'll use for his 7th grade science!

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