Indigo and the colors of the rainbow


Cold open was Indigo by NIKI. 


Students were then invited onto the porch to use the CD spectrographs.


The students were then given pieces of paper on which to record the colors that they saw in the order in which the colors appeared. The students were encouraged to use the CD spectrograph boxes to check out their answers.

The expectation had been that most would have five or six colors in the order seen. The diversity of actual results was surprising.

To capture the diversity each unique answer was reflected onto the whiteboard using color matching dry erase markers. 

This allowed the echoing of Neil deGrasse Tyson's words, a scientist makes a finding, another scientist checks the result, a third may chime in to help sort out differences. For the seven theories on the board, six researchers concurred on a six color sequence. 

Then a pivot to the absence of indigo in all spectra posted on the board  

Which led to ROYGBIV and how the rainbow wound up with seven colors including the non-existent indigo. This approach required the full period to complete.

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