Light Waves

A crack of lightning. The blue glow of a phone screen. A blinking firefly. The blazing sun. A camera’s rapid flash. No matter the source, light travels in waves, and it does so at a speed faster than anything else in the universe. But what is light, anyway, and how do we study it? In this book, readers in grades 4-9 will learn about light waves and light’s properties and how people–and animals–manipulate light for their own purposes. This series features a variety of science topics aligned to NGSS standards. From mixing matter to the study of sound waves, each informative book includes a glossary, comprehension questions, and an activity for home or the classroom.

A crack of lightning. The blue glow of a phone screen. A blinking firefly. The blazing sun. A camera’s rapid flash. No matter the source, light travels in waves, and it does so at a speed faster than anything else in the universe. But what is light, anyway, and how do we study it?

This series covers a variety of science topics such as matter, energy, and the weather. For example, Earth’s Place in Space teaches readers about the solar system, the Milky Way, space exploration, the Goldilocks Zone, meteor showers, black holes, and the Mars rovers. Chunks of text are accompanied by photos or diagrams, making the content easy to digest. Captions help to link the images to the main text, and the images themselves range from archival photos to the latest portrait of a black hole from the Event Horizon Telescope. Directions for a related activity are included in each book, along with another suggested extension activity and text-dependent questions in the back matter. Glossary terms appear in bold print, while other terms of interest are in italics. General “Before Reading” suggestions are the same throughout the series. VERDICT Good titles to update science collections and align with NGSS topics. - SLJ Fall 2019

A crack of lightning. The blue glow of a phone screen. A blinking firefly. The blazing sun. A camera’s rapid flash. No matter the source, light travels in waves, and it does so at a speed faster than anything else in the universe. But what is light, anyway, and how do we study it? Read about light waves and light’s properties and how people--and animals--manipulate light for their own purposes.