Reflection & Refraction Lesson for Kids - Lesson | Study.com
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Reflection & Refraction Lesson for Kids

Lesson Transcript
Instructor Mary Jon Hadley

Mary Jon has taught in an elementary school for nine years, and am currently working on my doctorate in curriculum, instruction and assessment.

Reflection is how light bounces off surfaces, while refraction is the bending of light. Review examples of each type of phenomenon and study explanations for how they work.

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Reflection

Have you ever walked outside at night and had to use a flashlight to see where you were going? Or perhaps the lights in your house went out, and you had to use a flashlight to get around in your home.

Did you know your flashlight was using reflection to direct the light coming from that tiny light bulb into a beam for you to see? Reflection is light bouncing off of a shiny object. Next time you pick up a flashlight, take a look at the area around the light bulb. You'll notice that it's a shiny silver color. This allows the light to bounce off the shiny material, and reflect back out to shine in any direction you point your flashlight. Since human eyes are not made like cat or dog eyes, we cannot see in the dark without extra help. Thank goodness for flashlights.

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  • 0:04 Reflection
  • 1:30 Refraction
  • 2:26 Lesson Summary
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Refraction

Another property of light is refraction, which is the bending of light. When light travels at an angle through one material, such as air, into another material, such as water, the light bends. The straight path that light travels in is affected by the material it is passing through. If light passes through a glass of water with a flower in it, the stem of the flower will look bent or broken, as in the example picture.

A flower stem appears broken in a glass of water
A flower stem appears broken in a glass of water

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Reflection is light bouncing off of a shiny object. Refraction is the bending of light. To help you remember the difference between reflection and refraction, think of the mirror and the rainbow. When you look in the mirror and see your reflection, light is bouncing off of the mirror and back at you. This is what allows you to see yourself in the mirror. When light is bent traveling through a raindrop, the colors of light are being refracted. Or, think about what the words on a page look like before and after using a magnifying glass.

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