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Chapter 5

Ray Model of Light

One idea — draw light as a straight line with an arrow — and everything else in the chapter follows from it. Eight lessons, eight labs, a chapter map, and thirty questions.

The one idea behind the whole chapter

A model is a scientific representation of something. The ray model represents light as a straight line with an arrow on it — the line shows the path, the arrow shows the direction of travel.

Why that is enough Every behaviour in this chapter is that one straight line meeting a boundary.

Meets a mirror → it bounces off (reflection). Meets a rough surface → each ray still bounces, but in scattered directions. Meets glass or water → it bends (refraction). Bends by different amounts for different colours → it splits (dispersion).

So there is very little to memorise. What earns the marks is drawing the line correctly and saying what happened to it — which is exactly what the labs here let you practise.

This is scoped for G3. The textbook marks i = r, the whole of refraction and the whole of dispersion as optional for G2. For you they are core — and together they are nearly half the chapter.

5.1 · How do we represent light?

Lesson 1

Rays, beams and ray diagrams

The three-card experiment that proves light travels in straight lines — slide a card out of line and watch the flame vanish.

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Lesson 2

How we see things

Luminous and non-luminous objects, and the question that catches everyone: can you see a white ball in a totally dark room?

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5.2–5.3 · Reflection

Lesson 3

Plane mirrors and their images

Same size, upright, virtual, laterally inverted, equally far behind. Raise your right hand and see which hand the image raises.

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Lesson 4

The law of reflection

Incident ray, normal, point of incidence, reflected ray — and the rule i = r, on a protractor you can drag.

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Lesson 5

Curved mirrors

Concave curves inwards and converges; convex curves outwards and diverges. Dentists, headlights, road junctions and rear-view mirrors.

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Lesson 6

Smooth and rough surfaces

Why you see yourself in a mirror but not in paper — and why i = r is still true on a rough surface.

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5.4–5.5 · Refraction and radiation

Lesson 7

Refraction and dispersion

Why a pencil looks bent and a pool looks shallow, the cart-on-grass model, and how a prism splits white light into seven colours.

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Lesson 8

Radiation: benefits and harms

Infrared, ultraviolet and visible light — thermal cameras, sterilisation, vitamin D, skin cancer, light pollution and turtle hatchlings.

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Revise and practise

Revision

The whole chapter on one page

Every definition, the image characteristics, both reflection tables, the refraction rules and all the radiation applications.

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Practice

30 interactive questions

Label a ray diagram, type angles, sort applications — every wrong answer explains itself.

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Challenging · Lvl 2

Challenging Qns Lvl 2

Twenty harder questions with the options set deliberately close together — only correct reasoning separates them.

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