ScienceMakers Toolkit Manual - The History Makers

Physics
3. Look directly at the fl ashlight through the glass. What color is it?
4. Shine the fl ashlight up through the bottom of the glass and look down from the top. What color do you see
now?
Questions:
Imagine that the fl ashlight is the sun and the glass is the atmosphere when you look at them from the side. What
time of day do you think this view corresponds to?
What about when you look at the fl ashlight from behind, or look through the bottom of the glass?
Why does the sky look blue during the day, but when you look at the sun during a sunset it looks orange?
Why do you think pollution, though very bad, makes more beautiful sunsets?
Discussion:
When light interacts with a particle, some of it is scattered while some goes through. Lord John W. S. Rayleigh
(1842-1919) discovered that some colors of light are scattered more than others. In our atmosphere, blue light is
scattered more than red or yellow light. During the day we don’t look directly at the sun, so we are only seeing
the scattered light, which is blue. However, during a sunset, when the sun is low in the sky, we are looking at
it more directly. We see the yellow and orange light that is not being scattered but is passing through the atmosphere
to our eyes.
In this experiment, the milk particles are doing the scattering. Just like the light from the sun, the light from the
fl ashlight is made up of many colors. The milk in the glass is scattering the blue light but allowing the yellow
and orange light to pass through. This makes the milk appear blue when looked at from the side, but yellow
when looking straight at the fl ashlight.
Suggested Resources:
SCIENCE MADE SIMPLE, INC, Why is the Sky Blue
WhySkyBlue Enterprises, Why is the Sky Blue?
Ask A Physicist: Explain how beautiful sunrises and sunsets are the result of dust in the atmosphere?
Bibliography: Cobb, Vicki, and Cobb, Josh. Light Action!. New York: HarperCollins, 1993
See this experiment online at: http://www.physicscentral.com/experiment/physicsathome/sunset.cfm
148
Clayton Bates, Jr. - Video Clip Transcription
Clip 1 - Wanting to be a Pilot: I dreamed of becoming, as I said, I wanted to become a pilot, I got to designing
airplanes, but I just realized at that time I had to wear corrective lenses, wear eyeglasses and they were very
strict then. I knew I wasn’t gonna become a pilot and so I took to building airplanes and designing them and so
the dreams were to become an engineer, so it was never a question of what I was going to do or become, but
just how I was going to go about doing it.
Clip 2 - Dealing with Failure: I went to Brooklyn Technical High School and you have to take an entrance examination
to get into the high school and I remember I took it when I could the fi rst time with a gentleman I still
remember his name, I don’t know why, my wife accuses me of remembering things that are totally useless, but
Harry Waldheim was his name. Well, he passed the fi rst time, and I didn’t, I, you know, that hurt me very, very
much, but I did take it the second time, the year after, did get in, and did extremely well, was very interested,
graduated well ahead of, you know, Harry when he was there, I graduated about fi fth in the class of over 600
students. so I did very [well]. Once I got in, it was fi ne, but I didn’t pass the exam the fi rst time to get in, and