So we wrapped up our unit this week figuring out a whole bunch of answers to all our questions!  We know all about light, the conditions to see something, how color and light work together, and also about light we can't see!  Way to go 6th graders!

So we figured out that there is indeed light we cannot see.  This light behaves the same as visible light, reflecting off of various surfaces, transmitting through others, and absorbing into even others.

With this, we recognize that our sense of hearing is like our sense of sight in that there are sounds we can't here, as seen in using this tone generator.

We also saw Mrs. Brinza use a tuning fork (which we could hear) create waves in a tub of water...and this got us thinking that maybe we could represent light as waves.  If waves carried a different amount of of energy than our eyes or ears couldn't register, then this made sense to revise our model.  We also used this wave simulator to better understand this!

We recognized that light may have a higher or lower frequency which are eyes are designed to detect.  And that allowed us to better understand the electromagnetic spectrum, which contains visible light, along with the infrared light that comes out of the remote!  We also learned about other wavelengths of radiation that carry more or less energy!

 So we went through all our anchoring phenomena pictures and uncovered the fact that we have learned a LOT about light. We've developed TONS of models to show how light enables us to see, how it interacts with various objects in different situations, and how light plays a role in color.

This drove us to ask the question: Is there actually light we can't see?

If light we can see (visible light) transmits, scatters, reflects and absorbs, wouldn't any other type of light do the same?

So we wondered what came out of a remote...does it behave like the light we can see out of a flashlight or the sun?  So we did some tests at our houses with our remotes.  Sadly, our school doesn't have a TV anymore, so we had to take the testing home.

Based on everyone's data, we came to the conclusion that what comes out of the remote is light, because it behaves just like all the light we could see.  However, this light we couldn't see.  We're claiming that what comes out of the remote is non-visible, or invisible light!

We've applied the light model and how we see color to our hidden message project!  It's been really incredible using this phenomena to see one idea through one filter and another idea through another filter!

Some students even took the tech challenge and did their assignment through Google Slides!