On the 3rd of March 2020, during Engineer’s week, Magaly Mora (Tyndall, WITs, IEEE) and Moises Jezzini (Tyndall, IEEE) hold a workshop titled “what is light?” in the 4th class in St. Maries of the Island National School with around 20 students. The workshop used the LASER Classroom™ Light Blox kits designed for classroom presentations, and hands-on light and laser experiments provided by the IEEE Photonics Society.

The workshop was organized as a series of questions: 

• How do we see? What do we see?
  • Why can’t you see when you close your eyes?
  • Why can’t you see well in the night?
  • Close your eyes; why did you stop seeing?
• How does light travel?
  • Does the light turn or bend?
  • Does the light expand?
• Can we change the direction of light?
  • How can we change the direction of light?
  • How much can we change the direction of light?
  • What materials do you think can work?
• Does white light exist?
  • Is white light an illusion?
  • Can we divide light?
  • What are the colors?
  • Can we make white light from color lights?

The presenters used these slides to aid the presentation. After discussing each question, the workshop included an experiment to verify the answers collected by the group. The experiments used the Light Blox kit provided by IEEE Photonics to demonstrate the recollected theories. After each experiment, the presenters introduced a well-known technology based on that property of light.

The participants were participative and gave us some fantastic answers but even better questions. This event proved to be great fun for both the participants and our volunteers.