Ready, Set, Glow

*Some mushrooms glow in the dark! These "bioluminescent" mushrooms can be found in tropical rainforests. Their glow is caused by a chemical reaction.

*Light can travel from the sun to Earth in approximately 8 minutes. Traveling that distance by car (at 60 miles per hour) would take 177 years!

*In South America, some people carry fireflies in net bags to help them find their way in the dark!

Let There Be Light!

Light is a form of energy that behaves like an ocean wave, rising and falling as it travels through the air. The measurements between light waves are called wavelengths. Our brains interpret wavelengths of light as color.

When we see light from the sun or a light bulb, it looks white. But white light is actually made up of many colors- red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, and violet. These are the colors of the visible spectrum- the part of the spectrum that the human eye sees.

To see the colors that make up white light, you can use a prism. A prism is a solid, transparent object with rectangular sides and triangular ends. It separates light into its component colors.

Normally, light travels in a straight path, but when it travels from one transparent substance to another- like from air to water or from air to a solid prism- it bends slightly. This bending of light is called refraction. Every color refracts a different amount, allowing each one to be seen separately.

A rainbow is formed in a similar way. The rain and sun work together to create a rainbow. Sunlight passes through raindrops. The raindrops act as tiny prisms, refracting the light, and showing all the colors of the visible spectrum as an arc of colors in the sky.

A Light Unto the World
We Jews are like “God-prisms” in the world. “God-prism” is an unusual and imaginative word that explains an important religious idea. In the same way that a prism refracts ordinary white light, revealing a hidden reality of extraordinary beauty, so too, when Jews observe God’s commandments, setting ourselves apart through positive actions, our behavior reveals the splendor of God’s holiness in the world. Our lives then become a mikdash m’aht, a small sanctuary, fulfilling the command in Shemot 25:8, “Let them make Me a sanctuary that I may dwell among them.”