Stars of a thousand colors
What happens if colored light beams are mixed? How can we split light into the colors of the rainbow? What can we learn from studying the light coming from the stars?
To answer these questions and learn techniques and principles useful for the study of stars, participants will carry out experiments on light, building a real spectrograph. Through hypotheses, measurements, and models, they will come to understand the physical principles that determine the properties and functioning of stars.
The project is designed with two different levels of depth: it can be proposed to the final classes of primary school and lower secondary school (ages 9-12), or in the more in-depth version for third-year lower secondary school classes and the first two years of upper secondary school (ages 13-15). It can be carried out over about 5 sessions of 1 hour each.