Q1.
It is fun to make different shapes with shadows. Try it with your friends!
Answer
Make hand shadows on a wall. Here is how.
- Choose a room with a plain light-coloured wall. Shut the doors and windows.
- Switch on one torch or lamp and point it at the wall.
- Stand between the light and the wall. Hold your hands in the beam of light.
- Fold your fingers into different shapes and watch the wall, not your hands.
- Move your hands nearer the light and the shadow grows bigger.
Sample answer — easy shapes to start with:
- Bird: cross your two hands at the wrists and flap your fingers like wings.
- Dog: join your fingers to make a long face; let the thumb open and shut as the mouth.
- Deer: spread the fingers of one hand behind the fist of the other for the horns.
- Snake: hold one hand flat and let it wave slowly.
What the play teaches you: the shadow takes the shape of the thing that blocks the light — not its colour. A red hand and a brown hand make exactly the same black shadow.
Why it happens: Light travels in straight lines. Wherever your hand stops it, no light lands on the wall, and that dark patch has the same outline as your hand.
Did you know? Shadow puppetry has been practised in India for a long time. You can cut out a peacock or an elephant from thick paper, tape it to a stick, and put on a shadow play for your class. Shadows can also tell the time — ancient people made a device called a sundial. Raja Jai Singh of Jaipur built Jantar Mantar in Jaipur, Ujjain, Delhi, Varanasi and Mathura, and its sundial, the Samrat Yantra, tells time accurately from a shadow.