Trichroic Prism

Description:  A trichroic prism splits light into three beams of light with different wavelengths (or colors). These prisms are used in some video cameras to send different colors of light to different color sensors. The prisms are coated with special coatings to filter and transmit different wavelengths of light. This device could be used to investigate interactions of light with various materials to in increasing complexity K-12.

Web Resources:  Dichroic prism - Wikipedia, Trichroic Prism - Amazon

A dichroic prism splits light into two beams of differing wavelength (colour). A trichroic prism assembly combines two dichroic prisms to split an image into 3 colours. They are usually constructed of one or more glass prisms with dichroic optical coatings that selectively reflect or transmit light depending on the light's wavelength.

The Shadow Illusion

Description:  Derek Muller from Veritasium uses the shadow illusion to show that the size and shape of a pinhole does not affect the image projected. Most of the participants believe they are looking at the shape of the hole rather than the shape of the Sun projected on the wall. This could be an excellent phenomenon to start a unit on light or vision.

Web Resource: Pinhole camera - Wikipedia

When sunlight shines through a small hole, it casts a circular image on the wall regardless of the shape of the hole. The size of the hole also doesn't affect the size of the image. This counterintuitive demonstration shows that the hole is acting like a pinhole camera, producing an image of the sun on the wall.

Vantablack - The Darkest Material on Earth

Description:  Vantablack is an synthetic material created by Surrey Nanosystems. It consists of a series of carbon nanotubes that are aligned vertically. It absorbs nearly 100% of the light that enters the tube giving. Since nearly all of the light is absorbed by the material it appears black. In the video below a bronze statue is covered in Vantablack and it disappears from view. This phenomenon can be used to illustrate the idea of illumination. Even though a light source is present none of the light reflects back to the viewer and so all that remains is darkness.

Web Resources: Vantablack | Surrey NanoSystems , Vantablack - Wikipedia

Please note that this is a development product and not yet released. It is not Vantablack or Vantablack S-VIS (as the mask was previously coated with), but a new non-nanotube coating we have in development. Its total hemispherical reflectance is c.0.3% at 600nm wavelength.