Imagine looking at a picture of a brightly colored frog. Put on your color filter science goggles, and the frog is gone! Imagine writing a message that can only be read with your special science goggles. Now imagine your classroom—20 goggled faces looking around the room in wonder. “It’s gone! It disappeared!” “The flowers on my shirt turned to little black spots!” “Your stripes disappeared!” “Weird … this pencil turned all white!” These are only a few of the amazed exclamations we heard as we began our 10-day unit on color and light filtration. We continued to hear such enthralled remarks throughout our unit, and the WOW factor never diminished.

Our main objective for the experience was not to delve too deeply into the physics behind light wavelengths but rather to provide students an opportunity to build a science tool, use it to investigate a topic, and then apply their knowledge to produce a book to share with others. This unit achieved all that. Studying color filtration, students literally investigated everything they “saw” in their classroom. As they worked with the goggles, students sharpened their observation skills, learned some basics about light and color, and discovered firsthand that science knowledge can be used and applied to other subjects.