Katherine Clerk Maxwell and Color Mixing of Light | American Institute of Physics

Katherine Clerk Maxwell and Color Mixing of Light

Katherine Clerk Maxwell and Color Mixing of Light

A black and white posed photograph of James Clerk Maxwell standing in a three-piece suit, holding a hat in one hand. Katherine Maxwell sits in a dark dress, a large cross hanging from her neck. At her feet is a very shaggy small white dog. The backdrop is a scene of rocks by the ocean.

Katherine Clerk Maxwell (right) with her husband James Clerk Maxwell (left) and their dog Toby. Image courtesy of the Cavendish Laboratory, Cambridge University. This image is under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 Unported License (CC BY-NC 3.0). https://cudl.lib.cam.ac.uk/view/PH-CAVENDISH-P-01180/1.

This lesson introduces Katherine Clerk Maxwell, emphasizing her involvement in color theory and teaching students light color mixing. The teacher will demonstrate mixing colors using lights, calling up students to help participate in activities which they will demonstrate to the class. Students will be able to identify the primary colors of light, understand how they mix to create secondary colors, and learn about what Katherine and James Clerk Maxwell discovered involving color mixing: that mixing red, green, and blue creates white light.