Year 6 carried out a Science investigation to discover how the size of an object’s shadow depends on the distance between the light source and the object. Before the investigation, children made a prediction, explained the method, noted the apparatus needed and drew scientific diagrams. They then drew up a results table and used this to plot a graph to show their findings as well as writing a conclusion.
What did we find out?
The size of the object’s shadow increases as the distance between the light source and the object decreases. This is because light
travels in straight lines, so objects closer to the light source block light travelling in a greater range of different directions. As a wide light source moves towards an object, the shadow’s edges become less sharp (as it actually consists of overlapping shadows due to different parts of the light source). We only changed one variable to make it a fair test.
