Sue Fliess - Flash and Gleam: Light in Our World

Sue Fliess

Illustrated by Khoa Le

j Millbrook Press / Minneapolis

Light in Our World

Lights

Rise

Open eyes

Reach

Low

Nurture, grow

Bolt

Flash

Thunder crash

Color

Bend

Find the end

Glimmer

Glow

Wish and blow

Blast

Beam

Let us dream

Fade

Away

Cannot stay...

Swirl

Flow

Come and go

Flicker

Feel

Help us heal

Float

Guide

Far and wide

Flicker

Feel

Help us heal

Blink

Play

Show the way

Shimmer

Glance

Blaze and dance

Soar

Wait...

Celebrate!

Spark

Fly

Fill the sky

Burst

Create

Illuminate

Bless

Shine

In a line

Dazzle

Thrill

Spread goodwill

Gleam

Bright...

Say good night.

The Science of Light

What Is Light?

Light is a form of energy. We see the light of different energies as different colors. Red is lower-energy light, and blue is higher-energy light. White light is a combination of all the colors of the rainbow! When white light passes through a prism , a thick piece of glass, usually triangular in shape, the light is separated into its individual colors and we see a rainbow.

Light moves very fast! It travels 186,000 miles (299,338 km) every second. Our Sun is million miles (150 million km) away. This means that it takes eight minutes for light to travel from the Sun to Earth. Wow!

The biggest source of light on our world is the Sun. The Sun is a star, which is an enormous ball of very hot gases. As the star uses its fuel of hydrogen, it makes energy in the form of light and heat. This sunlight warms Earth, creates the weather, and is key to

photosynthesiswhich is when plants and some organisms use sunlight to grow.

Lets look at some other light:

Lightning

Lightning is a powerful movement of static electricity. Its a giant electrical spark, caused when thunderclouds separate positive and negative charges. Most lightning happens within the cloud, but sometimes you can see it happening between the cloud and the ground. These are called lightning strikes.

Rainbows

A rainbow is formed when sunlight shines on tiny droplets of water in the air. The water droplets act as miniature prisms, separating the sunlight into colors and reflecting the light back toward you. The colors are always the same, but the length and clarity of a rainbow depend on the size and number of the water droplets in the air.

The Northern Lights

The northern lights are natural displays of colored lightor aurorasthat appear in the night sky, and theyre magnificent! Auroras are caused by collisions between electrically charged particles from the Sun and Earths air. The auroras that occur in the Northern

Fun fact

The scientific term for light is electromagnetic radiation . This is because light is made up of electric and magnetic energy. Radiation just means that the light energy travels outward from its source in a straight path.

Fun fact

Plants cannot eat green light. They reflect it away. This is why plants look green!