Pixel Peeping [PhET+Virtual Lab]

Students have been looking at screens too much for about two years. Some would say it's been longer than that. But have they really looked at those screens? Up close? "Pixel Peeping" asks them to do just that.

For the in-person version, we used pocket magnifiers to examine the pixel structure on our classroom laptop LCD screens. We protected the screens from the magnifiers with sheets of transparency film. (You remember transparencies, right? And carbon paper, film canisters, telephone cords, ...)

PhET's Color Vision sim is activated. The activity begins innocently enough with microscopic inspections of red, green, and blue. Things take a turn when white is examined, and go off the rails with yellow. 

A broad but finite palette of simple color compositions is then matched to their respective names. Periwinkle and chartreuse are conjured through the simulation. 

For the remote teaching; distance learning (RT;DL) version, I took photographs through the lens of the pocket magnifier. I feel like I should have done something more professional, but I got great results keeping it simple. I was not gentle in post-processing. My obligation was more to the lesson than being honest about the limitations of the equipment.

Pixel Peeping [PhET+Virtual Lab] at Teachers Pay Teachers 

This activity pairs nicely with Fun With Colors [PhET], YouTube Physics: Color Mixing and the Conceptual Physics Alive episode, "Light and Color". The YouTube Color Mixing lesson features the story of cephalopod camouflage, wherein we learn about biological pixels known as chromatophores.