Magnifiers & Microscopes

Concave and convex lenses-disover how a lens' shape can affect what we see.

Important Dates

Registration Opens:
Wednesday, June 01, 2011, at 9:00 a.m.

Registration Closes:
Monday, April 23, 2012, at 5:00 p.m.

Program Starts:
Monday, September 12, 2011, at 9:00 a.m.

Program Ends:
Friday, June 29, 2012, at 3:00 p.m.

Contact Information

For more information about this program, contact:

Menzel Smith-Jones
Brookhaven National Laboratory
Bldg.400C – P.O. Box 5000
Upton, NY 11973-5000
631-344-4495 (phone)
631-344-7098 (fax)
slc@bnl.gov

Explore with concave and convex lenses to discover how the shape of the lens affects what we see. Experiment with magnifiers and microscopes and discover the many scientific uses of each.

Vocabulary

concave, convex, flat, light ray, magnify, refract, reflect

Audience for This Program

Elementary Grade Level 2nd, 3rd, and 4th.

Program Benefits

Lesson Objectives

1) Use scientific skills: observation, comparison, and recording data.

2) Discover that refract means to bend.

3) Using lenses to refract light, observe that a concave lens makes objects look smaller while a convex lens makes objects look larger.

4) Use a magnifying glass and microscope to observe that more detail can be seen when objects are under magnification.