TOPS #17 Light

Light is magic unless you can see through the illusions. If you understand its particle and wave nature - how it reflects off mirrors and refracts through water, how it magnifies and shrinks whole worlds through lenses and pinholes and turns them upside down, how it adds and subtracts color and splits itself into rainbows, then, better than magic, light becomes a predictable, trusted friend. Traditional lab equipment - optical benches, ray tables, prisms, curved lenses and mirrors - normally costs big bucks. But Light achieves even better results using little more than 2 ordinary hand lenses. Throw in an extra penny-sized lens, and your students will even build microscopes and telescopes!