Make a Rainbow - Engineer Inside

Make a Rainbow

Can you make a rainbow appear using only things around your house and some science know-how?

What you should do:

Get an activity sheet from the link below
Follow the steps as you go down this page
Make notes and observations as you go
Experiment, tinker, and engineer!
Write up your experiment

Ideas and Inspiration

1 / 4

We can't stop finding rainbows now after trying this challenge!

2 / 4

You can split light to spread the colours out

3 / 4

Have you ever seen a rainbow in your home?

4 / 4

There are colours mixed into all sorts of things

❮ ❯

Click the arrows to see more.

To start with, get a copy of the activity sheet and have a look at the ideas and inspiration sections so you know what you're supposed to be doing.

The next sections are all laid out in the same order as the activity sheet. Make lots of notes and draw your designs - that's what good science is about! If you're 11-14 you can read more about each step in the Good Science Guide

Explore

Find examples and materials from around your house that you think could be useful. Use your imagination! Make a note on your activity sheet of your ideas and where you've seen Rainbows before.

Hints and Tips

Next, have a look at our experts' hints and tips - how did they approach this challenge?


Dr Phil Jemmett Splitting Light Printable transcript	Puja Unadkat Stacking water

Evé Wheeler-Jones Rainbow Chemistry	Rebecca Mackley Walking Water

Plan

Find out how you can build your creation! Take your ideas and inspiration from your activity sheet, or any new ideas you've picked up from our hints and tips, and start to plan how you're going to build and experiment.

Predict

It's time to predict what is going to happen! On your activity sheet make some predictions and plan how you will measure whether your creation has been a success. Remember that a hypothesis is a statement that you can test - Light will be split by the glass of water and a rainbow will be visible

So, you've got an idea in mind? Before you start testing anything out, make sure you've filled in the activity sheet so far. Then make sure that you've asked an adult for help and have a think about how to stay safe while doing an experiment.

Test

Try your creation out - how well does it work?

How can you measure how successful your creation has been?
Was your hypothesis right?

Research

So you've tested it out - did it work well? Have you learnt anything in the process? Now is the time to try and find out a bit more about what you've done.

Expert Creations

Let's find out how our engineers got on with what they created!


Dr Phil Jemmett Splitting Light Printable Transcript	Puja Unadkat Stacking Water

Evé Wheeler-Jones Rainbow Chemistry	Rebecca Mackley Walking Water

Improve

Having seen our engineers create their own experiments and test them out - do you have any ideas for how you could make your creation better? Try them out - see if you can get better results and measurements than you did the first time around!

Review

How are you going to tell other people about your results? What's the best way to share your new-found information?

	Stay Safe!
	Click to read our guide on staying safe while doing experiments