Hello. I'm Elizabeth Kennedy and we're here today to talk about the PASCO Color Mixer,
which is a brand new product, very exciting. I think you're really going to like it.
As you can see, the Color Mixer and a white background screen mount on the PASCO Optics Track,
on the bench here. But it's not necessary to use the bench.
You could use a white wall, you could use your whiteboard, you could stand these pieces just like this.
It's helpful to have the bench; I like to use it because it keeps things more stable.
But it's not absolutely necessary to have it, which is part of the versatility.
The Color Mixer, as the name implies, joins up to three colors of light together.
We'll start out and we'll have a look at the first color, which is going to be red today.
I'll use this sturdy little knob on the back to just turn on the red,
and I'll dial it up from not on at all, very low intensity,
all the way up to high intensity, to its brightest.
And there it is. It's a beautiful circle of red light.
Now I can take another color, such as green, and I can ask myself,
"what would happen if I mixed green light with red light?"
Well, if I turn it on just very, very low at first and bring up the intensity,
I can see that the green light and the red light overlap in this region,
and when they do they create yellow light.
Maybe not what I would have predicted, but it turns out that that's the case.
Now, I had the red light on and I've brought up the green light.
Suppose I turn down the red light.
Let's see what happens to the yellow color.
As it goes back to just green it fades through a series of more and more green colors,
almost a lime green.
Now I can turn on the third color of light and mix it in: the blue.
As I bring up the blue light I see the regions of overlap between green and blue and red and blue.
And in the region of overlap of all three of the lights I see a combination that looks
very much like white light.
So using just three colors of light I can create many other colors--
in fact, all the colors necessary to have a color television, for example.
Also, if I would like to, I could use the optional set of cards
that include both transparencies and reflective colors.
This can be purchased in addition to the Color Mixer.
It's really a set of trading cards, if you want to think of it like that,
that go along with the visible spectrum of light.
The trading cards--the transparencies and the reflective cards--have on them a graph:
in this case, the percent transmission versus the wavelength,
and I can get an idea of what wavelengths of light will be transmitted most intensely
through this color of filter.
Let's try this. We'll start with red, so I'll turn off the green and the blue light,
and I'll take out one of the filters.
I think I'll start out with the red filter,
and I'm going to cover up the light, the red light, with the red filter.
Let's see what happens.
OK. That is the red light covered with the red filter.
Next, I'll experiment with the blue light that we saw a minute ago with the blue transparency here.
This blue filter I'll go and put in front of the red light,
and it transmits virtually none of the red light that we can see.
OK. That's an example of the filters, the red and the blue.
Now let's see what happens when we reflect light from different colors of cards.
First, let's try red light on red light.
I'll put this reflection card with--you can see now it has a graph of relative intensity
of reflected light versus wavelength--
I'll put this in front of the red light and it reflects red light.
I'll use a green card. I'll put the green card in front of the red light.
Now, I think just out of curiosities' sake, I'll put the green card in front of blue light
and see what happens.
So here is the green card in front of blue light. OK.
Now we also have, in this optional set of cards, two yellow cards,
one of which is just regular, yellow paint or pigment, and the other of which is fluorescent yellow.
I'll put the regular yellow card in front and then I'll follow that with the fluorescent yellow card.
So, regular yellow versus fluorescent yellow.
And there you have it.
That is a look at the fantastic, awesome new PASCO Color Mixer.