What Gives the Morpho Butterfly Its Magnificent Blue?

Why so blue? As it turns out, very few things in nature only reflect blue light! A short video from a comprehensive science playlist highlights the beautiful blues of butterflies, birds, and human eyes. The narrator shows how adaptations...

What gives glaciers their blue hue? Study the phenomenon from the inside out with a video from an engaging science playlist. The narrator describes the conditions present in glacial ice, then explains how the substance affects visible...

Follow the migration of the monarch butterfly from northern North America to southern Mexico. A video explains how monarch butterflies navigate their migration north in the spring and south in the fall. Pupils learn how it takes multiple...

Use a container full of water as a prism and show that as light is bent, the individual colors from different wavelengths become visible. This explains why the sky appears to be blue midday, and why as the sun nears the horizon, it looks...

How do lighting types affect energy efficiency? Explore different types of lighting and the energy they use. Pupils learn about types of lights and calculate the energy used during a typical school year. They discover that being...

Though UV radiation can damage skin, it isn't all bad. The third installment in a six-part series allows the class to study the structure and function of skin. They learn about the different types of skin cancer and the SPF rating...

The buckeye is a medium-sized butterfly with two large multicolored eyespots on hindwings and one large eyespot on forewings. The background color of the buckeye is mostly brown. Its forewing has 2 orange cell bars and 1 large eyespot...

When your life science class is learning about the eye and how it works, you can add this activity as a demonstration of how the retina holds an afterimage. After staring at a red, green, or blue bird shape, pupils glance at a cage and...

Take a look into structural coloration, the physics of light, and how it is possible that the Morpho butterfly's wings appear to be blue, despite their containing no blue pigment at all. [3:03]

Take a look at astronomy through the light lens. From radio to gamma, light waves exist in every corner of the universe. An enlightening PowerPoint presentation gives an overview of the different categories of light and then discusses...