SUBJECTS: Science, Technologies
YEARS: 9–10
Do you know how radios transmit sound, or how ultraviolet light travels through the air?
Listen to Bernie Hobbs explain electromagnetic radiation and discover what radios, ultraviolet light, x-rays and nuclear blasts have in common.
Find out about their energy levels, how they travel from place to place, and at what speed, in this entertaining clip full of 'zippy' computer graphics.
Things to think about
- 1.What do you know about electromagnetic radiation? How do you think sound or pictures travel through the air when we listen to the radio or watch television? How fast do they travel and do they move at the same speed?
- 2.Listen as Bernie describes the role of photons in the transfer of electromagnetic radiation. What two things do photons do? What determines how fast the photons move? Watch the computer graphic that shows the shapes of the waves. Which type of radiation had the most spread out waves?
- 3.Explain the relationship between amount of energy, photon movement, and wave shape of electromagnetic radiation. Draw a flow diagram or construct a table showing the different types of electromagnetic waves and their relative levels of energy, beginning with gamma radiation which has the most energy. You could include examples of each and draw the waves.
- 4.Find out about things in the home that work using electromagnetic radiation (EMR). As the number of technological gadgets we use increases, so too does the amount of EMR we are exposed to. Investigate the possible health effects of EMR exposure and what things we can do to minimise our risk.
Date of broadcast: 2 Nov 2011
Copyright
Metadata © Australian Broadcasting Corporation and Education Services Australia Ltd 2012 (except where otherwise indicated). Digital content © Australian Broadcasting Corporation (except where otherwise indicated). Video © Australian Broadcasting Corporation (except where otherwise indicated). All images copyright their respective owners. Text © Australian Broadcasting Corporation and Education Services Australia is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License (CC BY-SA 4.0).