Lesson 4: The Electromagnetic Spectrum and Light

How can light travel millions of miles through the empty vacuum of space if there are no particles to vibrate?

What is the physical difference between a radio wave broadcasting music, the heat you feel from a fire, and an X-ray at the doctor's office?

What evidence forces scientists to accept that light behaves like a continuous wave and a stream of discrete particles?

Electromagnetic Wave
Photon
Electromagnetic Spectrum
Wave-Particle Duality
Photoelectric Effect

HS-PS4-3: Evaluate the claims, evidence, and reasoning behind the idea that electromagnetic radiation can be described either by a wave model or a particle model.

HS-PS4-5: Communicate technical information about how some technological devices use the principles of wave behavior and wave interactions with matter to transmit and capture information and energy.

To bridge mechanical waves into electromagnetic fields, examining how non-mechanical waves behave in a vacuum and how humans harness these frequencies for global communications and medical imaging.

How 5G cell networks and Wi-Fi send videos to your phone: Your smartphone is essentially a highly sophisticated radio tower. It translates data (like a video file) into an electric signal, which is pulsed through an internal antenna. This creates an alternating electromagnetic radio wave that travels through the air at the speed of light to a cell tower, carrying massive amounts of information across specific frequency bands without any physical wires.

MPS Science Differentiation Strategies

https://tinyurl.com/5n6c24k7

Unit 6 Assessment