Prism set: equilateral prisms 6"

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Why not take advantage of a bright sunny day to teach your students about the way light travels, refracts, and reflects? Using the United Prism Set you can easily create classroom activities that are as beautiful as they are scientific and informative. The Prism Set contains six acrylic prisms in five different shapes, including an equilateral prism, a rectangular block, a semi-circular block, as well as concave and convex lenses. The accompanying teaching guide gives sample activities as well as a short history on the study of light to aid in your lessons.

Using the prism set, ask your students to make inferences about how a double concave lens refracts light, to hypothesize what path light will take traveling through a rectangular prism, and to investigate what happens during magnification with a rounded prism. Through classroom discussion of the operations of geometry, the changes in density, and the nature of light, your students will learn the science behind their magical interactions with the colourful rays.

These prisms are a great addition to grade 4 science classrooms, when properties of light are introduced, as well as in grade 10 classes, where optics is explored in greater depth.

If you’re interested in finding more ways to use these prisms, the OISE Library has several books of experiments. Consider checking out The Optics Book: Fun Experiments with Light, Vision & Colour, Making Light Work: The Science of Optics, or Physics for Kids: 49 Easy Experiments with Optics for a wealth of innovative ideas.

The Prism Set is currently on display on the ground floor of the OISE Library, next to the Circulation Desk. Looking for more kits about physics? You can search our collections in the OISE Library K-12 Manipulatives Database! For more activity kits about light, colour, and optics, check out the Colour & Light Discovery Kit, the Light and Illusion Interactive Guide to Optical Tricks, and the United Prism Set.

Caution: These prisms are made of glass and may break. Please do not carry the container by the lid, as the lid may detach and cause the prisms to fall out!