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Hey everyone! A very big welcome to Science Week 2022, a week where we can celebrate all things Science! This padlet has heaps of resources to inform and entertain you, as well as an outline of what's to come. Get excited! ⭐️

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Solution 1: Touch the end of one bar (A) to the middle of the other bar (B) forming a 'T' shape. If the bars are attracted then bar A is magnetized and if they are not attracted then bar B is the magnet. This is because magnets have fields at the poles (the ends) but not in the middle. So the end would attract and middle would not.

Solution 2: Hang a rod from the ceiling and if it turns north than it is the magnetized rod.

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This year's theme is 'Glass: More Than Meets the Eye' 

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This year's theme is 'Glass: More Than Meets the Eye' 

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It honours the UN International Year of Glass and celebrates the many roles glass plays in our lives, plus investigating glass as a part of our sustainable future.

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Monday - DIY kaleidoscopes and watching Blown Away!!

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Monday - DIY kaleidoscopes and watching Blown Away!!

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Come join us in the Makerspace where we will be making kaleidoscopes!

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Celebrate National Science Week with us in the blacked out Physics Lab! Glow in the dark snowcones, bubbles, party music, glow sticks and cool science demonstrations will be awaiting you.

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Pop in as we make glass invisible, check out Mrs. Hepworth's daughter's award-winning Nova Rover in BSH!

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Compete in groups or individually, testing out the science knowledge you have accumulated throughout the week, fun prizes on offer! Watch as your house captains have THEIR science knowledge put to the ultimate test (and get exposed).

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Friday - Making Edible Sugar Glass Biscuits!!

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Friday - Making Edible Sugar Glass Biscuits!!

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Make your own completely edible stained glass window in the Food Tech Lab!

Check out the recipe here:
https://www.you.co.uk/mary-berry-stained-glass-window-biscuits/

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Check out Blown Away, a reality show where participants compete in a glass blowing competition!

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This is an article from Curious Kids, a series for children. The Conversation is asking kids to send in questions they'd like an expert to answer. All questions are welcome - serious, weird or wacky!

How do glasses help you see? - Andy, age 5, Vincentia.

Hi Andy, and thank you for your question about glasses.

You've asked this at a very good time because more and more people are needing to wear glasses, including young children, and we don't really know why.

Our eyes let us see because light enters each eye, and the eye then creates a message that goes to the brain.

The eyeball itself doesn't actually "see" - the brain sees. The eyeballs just take pictures, like two little cameras. To see properly, each eyeball needs to send the light that enters it onto a very exact spot inside the eyeball, called the retina. If the light falls onto the wrong place, your vision will be blurry.

Many people don't need glasses and can see just fine. This is because their eyeballs are focusing light properly onto the retina.

However, some people have eyeballs that are too long. They are called "shortsighted". For these people, things far away, like street signs or the classroom blackboard, can look blurry.

Other people have eyeballs that are too short. They are called "farsighted" and things close to them, like a book or a mobile phone, can look blurry.

Read more: Curious Kids: Why is the sky blue and where does it start?

Both shortsighted and farsighted people need glasses to help them see clearly.

They work by helping the eyeball to focus light onto the correct place, the retina. Only then can the eye see clearly.

Maybe you have a grandma or grandpa who wears glasses whenever they are reading books or using their mobile phone. When people get older, they usually become a little bit farsighted because a part of their eye called the lens becomes stiff and doesn't work properly.

More and more young people in the world are needing to wear glasses.

We're not sure why, but some scientists think that children who spend too much time inside are more likely to need glasses. We don't know if it's because they aren't getting enough sunlight or if they're simply reading too much or playing too many video games when they get home.

Most children in China are shortsighted and need glasses to see things far away. The Chinese government is so worried about this that they are making sure all students spend some time outdoors instead of just being inside the classroom.

Read more: We can prevent an epidemic of short-sighted kids with more time outdoors

Glasses can cost lots of money, and children who need glasses but don't wear them don't do as well in school. Once you need glasses, you usually need them forever - your eyes won't go back to normal on their own.

I hope that one day we can find out why people's eyeballs become too long or too short and then we can stop people needing to wear glasses in the first place. Then people will never lose or forget their glasses ever again!
Hello, curious kids! Have you got a question you'd like an expert to answer? Ask an adult to send your question to us. You can: * Email your question to curiouskids@theconversation.edu.au
* Tell us onTwitter by tagging @ConversationEDU with the hashtag #curiouskids, or
* Tell us onFacebook Please tell us your name, age and which city you live in. You can send an audio recording of your question too, if you want. Send as many questions as you like! We won't be able to answer every question but we will do our best.

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Curious Kids: How do glasses help you see?

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This is an article from Curious Kids, a series for children. The Conversation is asking kids to send in questions they'd like an expert to answer. All questions are welcome - serious, weird or wacky! How do glasses help you see? - Andy, age 5, Vincentia.

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Using a Magnifying glass, you could have a look at seeds, leaves, bark, insects, feathers, shells, rocks, wood, fabric, sand etc.

Magnifying glasses work using a convex lens (this is a lens that is thicker in the middle), hence when light enters, the shape of the lens makes the light bend, creating a virtual image that is bigger than the actual object.

TIPS:
- DO NOT look at the sun through a magnifying glass or focus the sun's light onto your skin.
- Magnifying glasses work best when you hold them close, but not overly close, to the object you are observing.
- If you hold the magnifying glass too far from your eye, the object will appear UPSIDE DOWN! This is because the light waves bending through the lens has passed the focal point and crossed over.

It is true that you can start a fire using just a magnifying glass. This is because when light passes through a magnifying glass, it meets at a focal point, when it captures the light from the sun, it becomes very hot - sometimes hot enough to start a fire.

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The Solar System was once full of small glassy spheres which were the basis for the formation of rocky planets, suggests new theory.

Astrophysicists are working hard to find out how our Solar System was formed. How did a disc of gas and dust become the heavenly bodies we find in the Solar System: planets, moons, and asteroids?

Four astronomers have now brought science one step closer to answering this enigma.

With the help of a computer model they have explained how huge asteroids, and ultimately planets like Earth, may have been formed.

The point of origin turns out to have been chondrules which are glassy pearls only a millimetre across. They are typically found in meteorites.

Meteorites have masses of chondrules

"When you look at the kind of meteorite known as a chondrite, you can see that it consists of 80 to 90 per cent chondrules. So it appears that chondrules are a crucial part of objects that were formed in the early history of the Solar System - before the formation of rocky planets," says co-author Martin Bizzarro from Starplan, a centre at the Natural History Museum of Denmark, University of Copenhagen.

"But nobody has really investigated how these chondrules came together. We've previously discovered that chondrules in the same meteorite can be of entirely different ages so now we want to find out how they got together and look at the role chondrules may have played in the formation of our Solar System," he says.

The computer models shows that chondrules in the disc of gas and dust found around the Sun in the early solar system, may have enabled objects known as planetesimals to grow so large that they became proto planets, which later become planets.

Layers of chondrules created proto-planets

The dust first gathered in clumps only centimetres in size, but because they were slowed down by the gas in the disc they drifted inward towards the Sun. An earlier computer model, which was developed by study co-author Anders Johansen, University of Lund, showed, however, that they could have managed to grow as big as 50 kilometres across in just a few hundred years.

The problem has been to explain how these planetesimals could grow even larger during the first few million years of the Solar System's history. This is where the tiny chondrules come into play. The planetesimals, several kilometres across, simply gathered up the chondrules they collided with in their orbit around the Sun.

They gathered layer on layer of chondrules and we have shown that in this way a protoplanet the size of Mars could be formed in two-three million years.

"After that there were no chondrules left. Then the planets grew as a result of the collisions between protoplanets planetesimals. We believe, for instance, the Earth and Moon were created by the collision between two proto planets," says Andersen.

All traces of the chondrules disappeared in the collisions. The only meteorites found today are those stemming from objects which were not involved in major collisions.

"A possible model" of reality in the asteroid belt

Liv Hornekær, who is an assistant professor at the Department of Physics and Astronomy at Aarhus University, has read the scientific article which has been published in the journal Science Advances.

"That's certainly one possible model for the formation of the rocky planets. It would appear that in a reasonably short time they're able to reach the size of the planets we see today," she says.

The new model builds on an existing one, Hornekær explains. "So we're getting closer to something resembling reality - especially the way it looks in the asteroid belt.

"You might say that the scientists have fine-tuned and tested the model by comparing it with what the asteroids look like in the asteroid belt," she says. "Then they looked at what significance the model has for the formation of rocky planets further into the Solar System, and find out that the model actually delivers a convincing mechanism for the formation of planets like Mars and the Earth."

Many questions left to be answered

A number of mysteries remain to be clarified if we want to gain full understanding of how planetary systems like our own can come into being. It isn't clear, for example, how chondrules are formed in the first place.

It takes heat to melt dust particles, so when they resolidify they become the glassy chondrules we are finding today in meteorites. The question is what melted them - was it shock waves in the dust cloud around the young Sun or was another mechanism at play?

"The chondrules was certainly there and they must've played an important role. They may have done the same thing in other stellar systems and we have discovered masses of planets orbiting other stars. The formation of chondrules must be a natural part of the development of planetary systems so we must find out how it happens," says Bizzarro.

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Read the original story in Danish on Videnskab.dk
Translated by: Hugh Matthews

Scientific links

External links

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New theory: Planets formed from tiny glass beads

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Astrophysicists are working hard to find out how our Solar System was formed. How did a disc of gas and dust become the heavenly bodies we find in the Solar System: planets, moons, and asteroids? Four astronomers have now brought science one step closer to answering this enigma.

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Unbreakable Glass inspired by Seashells?

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Unbreakable Glass inspired by Seashells?

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Can recycled glass to replace sand in 3D Printing?

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Can recycled glass to replace sand in 3D Printing?

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Discarded glass used to replace sand in 3D-printable concrete

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Concrete is a very popular building material, enough so that one of its key ingredients – sand – is in increasingly short supply. Scientists are thus now exploring the possibility of replacing that sand with glass waste that would otherwise end up in landfills.

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Take action against litter by getting involved in community groups around Victoria!

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Litter is an important ecological issue impacting Melbourne's waterways and bays. Discover how you can take action, see what others in the community are doing, or find out where to learn more.

Each year, litter on our streets makes its way through stormwater drains into rivers and creeks, and then to our bays and oceans. Not only is it unsightly - it has devastating impacts on wildlife.

Melbourne Water helps protect waterways by cleaning up litter. In 2020-21, we spent $4.8 million collecting litter and debris from our waterways and drainage system. That's around 1,695 cubic metres of rubbish - more than enough to fill half an Olympic-sized swimming pool!

Take action against litter

There are many ways to reduce litter, individually or as part of a community group.

Stop litter at the source

Prevent litter from becoming an issue before it reaches our waterways and bays:

put litter in a bin

participate in a clean-up day

consider buying things with less packaging

remember to reduce, reuse and recycle.

Start a litter reduction project

If your school or community group has a small litter reduction project, we can help provide funding through our Liveable Communities, Liveable Waterways Program.

If you'd like to discuss your project, email [email protected] .

Join a community group

There are many local groups you can volunteer for or support as a member:

Case studies: The Litter Action Project

Discover how communities and volunteers concerned about litter in their local waterways, and the impact on wildlife, embarked on a mission to tackle litter at its source. From construction site signage to murals and interactive sculptures, watch the following videos to see how they made a difference through Melbourne Water's Litter Action Project.

Learn more

Litter Trackers project

RMIT University's Litter Trackers website contains maps and data from a ground-breaking project that followed 100 GPS-tracked bottles launched into Melbourne's waterways. The 2019 project was a partnership with RMIT's AQUEST Research Group.

Educators can also download our lesson plans:

LitterWatch Victoria

LitterWatch Victoria's website provides a central location to store, interact with and extract litter data, collected from communities, organisations and government.

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Litter is an important ecological issue impacting Melbourne's waterways and bays. Discover how you can take action, see what others in the community are doing, or find out where to learn more. Each year, litter on our streets makes its way through stormwater drains into rivers and creeks, and then to our bays and oceans.

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As part of the University of Melbourne’s Science Festival 2022, the WEHI Student Association (WESA) are hosting an event on Thursday 18 August 2022, 4:30pm - 6pm at the
Walter & Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research.

This is an insightful opportunity for students looking to pursue Medicine in the future.

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How plants made our world and can save it!

From the oxygen we breathe to the food we eat - plants are central to the survival of our species. Using plants to offset the impacts of climate change; modifying plants or soil microbes to increase nutrition; growing plants on our buildings and roofs, or on other planets - are these the next big chapters for the future of plants? Find out as our expert green thumbs get together and uncover the mysterious world of plants.

In our fourth Science at Melbourne public lecture for 2022, the Faculty of Science invites guests to hear a moderated discussion with our expert panel followed by an audience Q&A session broadcast live from our beautiful Burnley Campus.

Host: Professor Moira O'Bryan, Dean, Faculty of Science, University of Melbourne

Moderator: Professor Kirsten Parris, Professor of urban ecology, School of Ecosystem and Forest Sciences, University of Melbourne

Panellist: Professor Michelle Watt, Adrienne Clarke Professorial Chair of Botany, School of BioSciences, University of Melbourne

Panellist: Dr Claire Farrell, Senior Lecturer (Green Infrastructure), School of Ecosystem and Forest Sciences, University of Melbourne

Panellist: Professor Stefan Arndt, Professor of Physiological and Ecosystem Ecology, School of Ecosystem and Forest Sciences, University of Melbourne

The Science at Melbourne Lecture series is the premier public event series from the Faculty of Science. The event program seeks to share our knowledge and love of science with the wider community, engaging them in current research and empowering them to ask questions and take actions for a better world. The series runs throughout the year covering scientific research, discoveries and theories that play exciting or unexpected roles in shaping and advancing our society.

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How plants made our world and can save it! From the oxygen we breathe to the food we eat - plants are central to the survival of our species. Using plants to offset the impacts of climate change; modifying plants or soil microbes to increase nutrition; growing plants on our buildings and roofs, or on other planets - are these the next big chapters for the future of plants?

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Physicists in Finland are the latest scientists to create "time crystals," a newly discovered phase of matter that exists only at tiny atomic scales and extremely low temperatures but also seems to challenge a fundamental law of nature: the prohibition against perpetual motion.

The effect is only seen under quantum mechanical conditions (which is how atoms and their particles interact) and any attempt to extract work from such a system will destroy it. But the research reveals more of the counterintuitive nature of the quantum realm - the very smallest scale of the universe that ultimately influences everything else.

Time crystals have no practical use, and they don't look anything like natural crystals. In fact, they don't look like much at all. Instead, the name "time crystal" - one any marketing executive would be proud of - describes their regular changes in quantum states over a period of time, rather than their regular shapes in physical space, like ice, quartz or diamond.

Some scientists suggest time crystals might one day make memory for quantum computers. But the more immediate goal of such work is to learn more about quantum mechanics, said physicist Samuli Autti, a lecturer and research fellow at Lancaster University in the United Kingdom.

And just as the modern world relies on quantum mechanical effects inside transistors, there's a possibility that these new quantum artifacts could one day prove useful.

"Maybe time crystals will eventually power some quantum features in your smartphone," Autti said.

Autti is the lead author of a study published in Nature Communications last month that described the creation of two individual time crystals inside a sample of helium and their magnetic interactions as they changed shape.

He and his colleagues at the Low Temperature Laboratory of Helsinki's Aalto University started with helium gas inside a glass tube, and then cooled it with lasers and other laboratory equipment to just one-ten-thousandth of a degree above absolute zero (around minus 459.67 degrees Fahrenheit).

The researchers then used a scientific equivalent of "looking sideways" at their helium sample with radio waves, so as not to disturb its fragile quantum states, and observed some of the helium nuclei oscillating between two low-energy levels - indicating they'd formed a "crystal" in time.

At such extremely low temperatures matter doesn't have enough energy to behave normally, so it's dominated by quantum mechanical effects. For example, helium - a liquid at below minus 452.2 Fahrenheit - has no viscosity or "thickness" in this state, so it flows upward out of containers as what's called a "superfluid."

The study of time crystals is part of research into quantum physics, which can quickly become perplexing. At the quantum level, a particle can be in more than one place at once, or it might form a "qubit" - the quantum analog of a single bit of digital information, but which can be two different values at the same time. Quantum particles can also entangle and teleport. Physicists are still figuring it all out.

Time crystals are among the many strange features of quantum physics. In normal crystals like ice, quartz or diamond, atoms are aligned in a particular physical position - a tiny effect that leads to their distinctive regular shapes at larger scales.

But the particles in a time crystal exist in one of two different low-energy states depending on just when you look at them - that is, their position in time. That results in a regular oscillation that continues forever, a true type of perpetual motion.

However, such perpetual motion only truly exists forever in ideal time crystals that haven't been fixed into one state or the other, and since the time crystals in the Aalto University experiments were not ideal, they lasted only a few minutes before they "melted" and started behaving normally, Autti said.

The same limitation means there's no way to exploit the perpetual motion: A time crystal would just stop - "melt" - if an attempt were made to extract physical work from it, he said.

Time crystals were first proposed in 2012 by the American theoretical physicist Frank Wilczek, who was awarded the Nobel Prize in physics in 2004 for his work on the subatomic "strong" force that holds quarks inside the protons and neutrons of atomic nuclei - one of the fundamental forces of the universe. They were first detected in 2016 in experiments with ions of the rare-earth metal ytterbium at the University of Maryland.

Time crystals have only been made a handful of times since then, as just creating them is extremely difficult. But the Aalto University experiments hint at a way for making them more easily, and for longer. This was also the first time that two time crystals have been used to form any kind of system.

Physicist Achilleas Lazarides, a lecturer at Loughborough University in the U.K., did theoretical research on time crystals that helped in the creation of a working quantum simulation of them in a specialized quantum computer operated by the tech giant Google.

Lazarides, who wasn't involved in the latest study, explained that the perpetual motion in time crystals takes place at the margins of the laws of thermodynamics, which were developed in the 19th century from earlier ideas about the conservation of energy.

It's usually stated that the total working energy of a system can only decrease, which means perpetual motion is impossible - something borne out over centuries of experiments.

But the quantum changes in the low-energy states of the nuclei in time crystals neither create nor use energy, so the total energy of such a system never increases- a special case that's allowed under the laws of thermodynamics, he said.

Lazarides acknowledged that the current experiments with time crystals are far from any practical applications, whatever they might be, but the chance to learn more about quantum mechanics is invaluable.

Time crystals are "something that doesn't actually exist in nature," he said. "As far as we know, we created this phase of matter. Whether something will come out of that, it's difficult to say."

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What are time crystals? And why are they so weird?

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Physicists in Finland are the latest scientists to create "time crystals," a newly discovered phase of matter that exists only at tiny atomic scales and extremely low temperatures but also seems to challenge a fundamental law of nature: the prohibition against perpetual motion.

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Discoveries that Changed our World Presentation

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Discoveries that Changed our World Presentation

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The University of Melbourne is hosting a Science Week lecture, presented by physicist Dr Suzie Sheehy, author of “The Matter of Everything: Twelve experiments that changed our world”.

The event is held on Thursday 18th August at Blackbox Theatre, Science Gallery Melbourne at 5pm - 8:30pm, but  you can also request access to a live broadcast through the above link.

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Curiosity might have killed Schrödinger’s cat, but it’s also helped advance our society to what it is today. Everything that has made our mode...

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How do you tell if your plants need water? Recently, I asked this question of a group of about 40 biologists at the Australian National University.

Most of them said they would stick their fingers into the soil. If you want to be more scientific about it, most horticulturalists would argue it is best to weigh the pot to determine how much water it contains.

I took a different view. After building special tools to measure the "pulse" of plants, I am more inclined to feel the leaves.

Not only can touch provide a new way to follow the flow of water through plant cells, it may also deliver new possibilities for plant monitoring and care.

The rhythm of plants

Plants have a natural rhythm, like a very slow heartbeat, caused by changing water pressure inside their cells.

Plants only beat around once a day, dehydrating during the day and rehydrating during the night. This process is too slow to watch for all but the most patient observers.

The pressure inside plant cells is called "turgor" and is usually between five and 20 atmospheres (up to 10 times the pressure inside a car tyre!). But while this pressure is large, plant cells are only a fraction of a millimetre in size.

For this reason, measuring turgor pressure has been traditionally been difficult and only done in lab settings. Put simply, we do not have a plug-and-play method to monitor the beating of plants.

Squeezing leaves

Measuring plant water status is pretty important. On a global scale, more water flows through plants than through rivers, and a great part of this flux is regulated by changes in leaf turgor pressure.

Similarly, agriculture uses about 70% of all the water managed by humans, and many forests around the world are succumbing to drought. It is a key time to study the beating of plants. But where to start?

While doing my PhD studying water movement in plants, I was trying to find a simple way to measure turgor pressure and water content.

Although turgor is a property of single cells, I thought I could monitor a group of cells by carefully squeezing a leaf.

My ideas were simple. Leaves are thicker when they contain more water, so I could monitor the water content by measuring the thickness of the leaf, which I would do by squeezing it with a constant amount of force.

And to monitor the water pressure inside a leaf's cells, I could measure the force exerted by the leaf when constrained to a given thickness.

As it turned out, these two ideas were not new - only new to me, and perhaps new to plant science. Materials scientists use tests like these all the time: a constant-force test is called a creep experiment, while a constant-thickness test is called a stress relaxation experiment.

How it works

A year of tinkering and thinking about this problem allowed me to test my ideas in a very simple way. I bought a micrometer (a workshop tool used to measure distances very accurately), coupled it with a motor, a force sensor and some computer controls, and devoted myself to squeezing leaves.

Preliminary tests worked well, and then I couldn't stop doing it!

Within the next six months, I had replaced the last chapter of my PhD with this serendipitous project. Colleagues and I successfully validated and published this simple method to monitor plant water status.

In the figure below, you can see the changes in the leaf thickness and turgidity of a grey mangrove ( Aviennia marina) measured under changing light conditions.

Touching plants

Measuring the beating of plants is important, but this is not the only exciting aspect of this project.

More broadly, touch-based measurements could uncover a new wealth of information about plant life. This venture may help us understand climate, save water, and hopefully help us in addressing " plant blindness ".

Plants are very adaptable organisms. Much of their adaptability comes from the ability to modify their body plan to suit different conditions.

Read more: Botanists are disappearing - just when the world needs them most

Being modular organisms made up of a collection of different cells, plants often modify the structure of cells and tissues, the strength of their walls, and the concentration of water-retaining compounds inside the cells. All of these properties, like turgor, are difficult to measure.

Touch provides scientists with a simple tool to study these mechanical properties of plant tissues.

A simple robotic system that could stay on a tree and continuously "feel" how the properties of its leaves (and stems, fruits and roots) change over time would have vast applications in research and industry.

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I spent a year squeezing leaves to measure their water content. Here's what I learned

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How do you tell if your plants need water? Recently, I asked this question of a group of about 40 biologists at the Australian National University. Most of them said they would stick their fingers into the soil.

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STEM Sisters is collaborating with Soapbox Science Melbourne to offer the inaugural Soapbox Science Melbourne event 2022. The event is a free, interactive public event exhibiting cutting-edge Australian research conducted by 12 incredible female experts in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) areas.

The event runs on Friday 19th August at the State Library from 2pm - 5pm, so feel free to check it out after school!

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Soapbox Science Melbourne - STEM Sisters

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SCINEMA - the 2022 Science Film Festival 

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SCINEMA - the 2022 Science Film Festival 

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Host your own SCINEMA Community Screening for free during the month of August in support of National Science Week!

Whether it’s at your school, library, in your local pub or even in your lounge room, you can host your own public or private event. All you need is a screen, computer, access to the internet and an audience (popcorn optional).

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SCINEMA International Science Film Festival Community Screenings - National Science Week

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SCINEMA is a celebration of the power of the moving image to inspire the young, satisfy the curious, explain the baffling and ask the impossible. Register to host your own free SCINEMA screening during National Science Week. SCINEMA is the largest science film festival in the southern hemisphere sho…

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#theSTEMproblem: Exploring problem-based learning in schools

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#theSTEMproblem: Exploring problem-based learning in schools

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To better explore the connection and possibilities of problem-based learning in STEM education, a team of researchers and teacher practitioners from a range of tertiary, secondary and primary educational contexts have come together to address what has been coined, somewhat provocatively, #theSTEMproblem.

Join an online live stream on 17 August 2022 at 6:30 pm – 8:00 pm.

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Did you know that when light hits the reflective surface of a standard silver mirror, the mirror reflects 95% of it?

When the light hits the reflective surface of a mirror, it is bounced in a particular way; this means when light hits at a low angle, it is reflected at the same low angle, and when the light hits at a high angle, it is reflected in the same direction. Hence, you should know how to use mirrors to make the most of the properties of the surface, knowing how light rays hit it.

We look in the mirror to reaffirm ourselves and to look at places where our eyes can't reach, and a mirror apparently does wonders by showing us the same thing that's in front of it! The ray of light traveling in the air near us bounces back from the mirror and makes our world less dark. Is it the way that these rays move really magic? What is specular reflection? Let's find out!

After you have understood all about the mirror and its thin layer of backing, do check how do neon lights work and how do ships float.

What is a mirror, and how does it work?

A mirror is an object that shows whatever is in front of it. But there's more; what constitutes a mirror is a glass surface that is coated on one side, behind the smooth glass, with a metal reflecting a clear image of whatever we keep in front of it.

When rays of light bounce back from a mirrored surface, it will show an image that is formed when the mirror reverses the direction of the image at an equal but opposite angle (from which the light was shining upon it). The light that bounces back in all directions is known as diffuse reflection. A diffuse reflection is what helps us see the image formed in the mirror.

The law of reflection says that when a ray of light falls on a reflecting surface, the angle of reflection equals the angle of incidence. All three angles are normal to the surface at a point that is the angle of incidence. The working of a mirror revolves around this very law.

What are the three types of mirrors?

The three major types of mirrors and their basic properties are as follows.

Plane mirror. A plane mirror forms images reflected in normal proportions but in the reversed direction, specifically left to right. These are the most common and widely used mirrors.

Concave mirror. A concave mirror is a spherical mirror and is curved outwards. The image that is formed is virtual, diminished, and unlike a real object.

Convex mirror. Another type of spherical mirror is a convex mirror that is curved inward, and the images that are created on this mirror depend on where the object is placed.

How do mirrors reflect?

While reading all this about reflection, have you been wondering if only a mirror can reflect? Hold up, what about the magic liquid, water? How come water reflects images as well?

The reflective ability of a mirror is owed to its power of bouncing back light. As water has the capacity to bounce back light as well, it becomes a reflecting surface like a mirror. The difference in the wave impedance of water and air means water reflects light.

And what about the reflection itself? For a mirror to reflect light, its property of being electrically conductive comes in handy. As light is an electromagnetic field, when a mirror is hit by light rays, the electric field parallel to the mirror gets canceled out by the side of the mirror that is metal, causing it to change directions and 'reflect' away.

In a plane mirror, the image is in the reversed direction, and the objects appear backward as the reflection of the object depicts the photons of light that are bouncing back in the same direction from which they came. Also, it's common to think that mirrors reverse left and right, but in reality, they don't. They flip the front and back, and nothing else.

Another fascinating question about the workings of mirrors is why mirrors seem to reverse left and right but not up and down. As already mentioned, they reverse front to back. So, how does that work? When you look at your pretty face in the mirror and point at it, the only time the direction in which you're pointing will be reversed will be when you point towards or away from the mirror, and you will see no change in the direction when you're pointing sideways.

Due to our brain's habit of rotating images, as we are used to seeing people in front of each other, mirrors don't reverse the images left and right, but we do in our brains. This is one of the most simple yet ignored facts, and people still seem to think mirrors reverse left and right when all they have to do to check if they believe in the right thing is to lie on their side and look into the mirror. What you witness is a mirror image and no reversal at all. If you pick an apple in your left hand and look into the mirror, your reflection would appear to be holding the apple in your right hand. But think clearly, if your friend were standing in front of you, from your side, their left hand would appear to be on your right one. That is precisely how mirrors work. They don't reverse anything, but as we are used to reversing the world's images 180°, we think the reflection we are seeing is reversed.

This concept of a 'mirror image' isn't difficult to get, but it is easily missed.

The very process of reflection is interesting, and it's not just about mirrors. If you're a science person, you must be aware of the conservation of energy, or even if you aren't, you must have heard it some time or another. The whole point of this topic is that energy can never vanish. All it can do is recycle. No matter what you do and how you do it, you can't make energy go away. The fact that's surprising to some people is that you can't even create it. The most you can do with energy is to convert it from one form to another.

There is no possible way of making conservation of energy go away. When you put an object in front of a mirror, you see this theory in action. Light is a form of energy that travels at a very high speed, and when an object is hit by it, where do you think that energy will go? It can't disappear, as we just discussed. This is when the reflection of light comes into the picture (pun intended).

Although, that is not the only thing that can happen to light energy. Other than being reflected, light energy can also get absorbed if the surface isn't smooth enough or otherwise incapable of reflecting, and it can also pass through if the surface is transparent. Transparent surfaces have the ability to let light pass through, unlike opaque ones.

Are there different qualities of mirrors?

There are different qualities of mirrors, and they vary based on the metals they use (coating material), surfaces, glass quality, mirror thickness, and other factors. To judge a mirror's quality, you must ensure that the glass is without inconsistencies and does not absorb more light. Remember to consider some important factors before choosing a mirror. Consider the flatness of the sheet of glass (how smooth is it?). Think about the purity of the sheet of glass (is it nice and clean?). Finally, make a judgment about the reflective coating on its surfaces, choosing metals such as aluminum or silver.

Mirrors are essential not only because of the element of decoration they provide but mainly because of the reflections they reflect or bounce.

To see is one of our most significant gifts, and when we need to see ourselves (and behind us), we understand the importance of mirrors. Mirrors also help some of us see not only ourselves but the rest of the world too. Spherical mirrors are used in optical devices. Some important terms related to spherical mirrors are as follows: aperture (the point from where reflection takes place), focus (any virtual point where light rays become parallel to the principal axis and converge after reflecting from the mirror), and focal length (the distance between a mirror or a lens and its focal point. In the case of plain mirrors, this length is infinity as it is half of the radius of curvature).

Here at Kidadl, we have carefully created lots of interesting family-friendly facts for everyone to enjoy! If you liked our suggestions for 'How do mirrors work? Amazing physics facts revealed for curious kids!' then why not take a look at 'Budgie care: essential take care guide for pet budgie owners!' or 'Chameleon lifespan: interesting facts on their age revealed!'

The Kidadl Team is made up of people from different walks of life, from different families and backgrounds, each with unique experiences and nuggets of wisdom to share with you. From lino cutting to surfing to children's mental health, their hobbies and interests range far and wide. They are passionate about turning your everyday moments into memories and bringing you inspiring ideas to have fun with your family.

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How Do Mirrors Work Amazing Physics Facts Revealed For Curious Kids | Kidadl

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Did you know that when light hits the reflective surface of a standard silver mirror, the mirror reflects 95% of it? When the light hits the reflective surface of a mirror, it is bounced in a particular way; this means when light hits at a low angle, it is reflected at the same low angle, and when the light hits at a high angle, it is reflected in the same direction.

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Optical Fibres transmit data in the form of light, used to connect Australia to the internet. Some of these cables are THOUSANDS of kilometres long, travelling along the seabed from Australia to the rest of the world. Typically, glass is used to transmit light over long distances.

One way to make a model of this is using JELLY!

Cut out a strip of jelly that is at least 1cm x 2xm x 15cm. Place this piece of jelly on a piece of black paper covered by a piece of plastic.

Make the room dark and shine a laser through one end of the jelly, see if you can bounce the light of the sides of the jelly!

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Have a go at making a lava lamp!

All you need to do is fill a glass with water and colourful food dye. Then add vegetable oil and watch as it floats on the top. Add a fizzy aspirin or vitamin tablet, and watch the magic happen!

The bubbles in the water are carbon dioxide gas, formed when sodium bicarbonate and citric acid in the tablets react in the water.

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vegetable oil

food colouring

effervescing (fizzy) aspirin or vitamin tablets

a glass tumbler

What to do:

1. Fill a glass tumbler about 1/3 full with water.

2. Add a few drops of colourful food dye.

3. Slowly pour vegetable oil into the glass so that it floats on the water, until the glass is almost full (tip-ping the glass a little helps it form a neat layer).

4. Drop a tablet into the glass.

5. Cue disco lights and music.

Safety note: Don't dispose of the oil and water down the sink. Pour it into a container that can be sealed before putting it in the bin. Better yet, add it to your compost.
What's happening?
The bubbles in the water are carbon dioxide gas, formed when sodium bicarbonate and citric acid in the tablets react in the water:

acid + carbonate -> carbon dioxide + salt + water

The bubbles take globs of coloured water with them up through the oil to the top of the glass. The gas bubbles burst at the surface and the coloured water drops then fall back down through the oil. You can recharge the lava lamp with another tablet when the first one has finished reacting.

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DIY Science: Lava Lamp - National Science Week

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What you need: vegetable oil food colouring effervescing (fizzy) aspirin or vitamin tablets a glass tumbler What to do: Fill a glass tumbler about 1/3 full with water. Add a few drops of colourful food dye. Slowly pour vegetable oil into the glass so that it floats on the water, until the glass is almost...