Reflection
Light bounces from a mirror at the same angle it arrives. Students use mirrors to redirect laser paths around obstacles.
Interactive physics
Guide light through mirrors, lenses, and prisms.
The Photon Lab helps students explore what happens when light reflects, bends, focuses, and separates into colors.
Open the Photon LabRefraction
Light changes direction as it moves between materials, such as air and glass. This bending explains lenses and many everyday effects.
Prisms and color
White light contains many colors. A prism separates those colors because each wavelength bends by a different amount.
Key ideas in light physics
Light usually travels in straight lines until it meets an object or a new material. A mirror changes its direction through reflection. A lens bends light through refraction, which can focus a beam or spread it out. Prisms use refraction to reveal a spectrum of colors.
Learn by testing a path
In the Photon Lab, students place and rotate mirrors, lenses, and prisms to guide a laser to its target. Challenges scale from simple direct paths for younger learners to multicolor routing and wave-optics puzzles for older students.