I created this freebie during my teachers college day. I was observing my mentor teacher, a wonderful man named Mr.C. Mr C was a few years shy from retirement. By the by, he was not expecting to be my mentor teacher. But there I was, standing in the middle of the Science department office being told that there was a mixed up with the scheduling. My supposed mentor teacher was double booked! Mr.C was kind enough to take me in.
At that time he was just starting the lesson on drawing ray diagrams for his grade 10 Science class. I saw Mr.C got prepared with his multi-coloured chalks, meter-long ruler and wooden protractor. I saw how tricky it was (and time consuming) to get going with the lesson.
First he had to draw the principal axis, then use the protractor to draw the curved mirror. Then used different coloured chalks to represent the different ray diagrams that can be drawn. Most of the time, his back was facing the class as he completed his drawings. Students had lull times waiting for Mr.C to finish drawing one ray before copying on their notebooks.
What struck me was that, most of the times students were only observing the finished products. They did not observe the drawings "in action".
So, without further ado, here's your Freebie - a powerpoint file that covers drawing ray diagrams off flat & concave mirrors. With a click of a button, your students get to see the ray diagrams being drawn to locate the image. Different colours are used for different rays as visual aid. I chose the speed of the drawings as medium to allow students enough time to observe them. But you can adjust the drawing speed (slower or faster) to your liking using the "Custom Animation" tab in powerpoint.
Below is a snapshot of the slides. Note that the animations are NOT shown here, you need to download the ppt file and play it to see the animations.
PS: If you like the Freebie and are looking for more, you can check out the FULL Optics Unit package at my TPT store. Happy Wednesday!!
