Test: Light and The Solar System - Year 6 MCQ

Smooth, polished surfaces like mirrors are excellent at reflecting light, creating clear mirror images. Rough, transparent, or textured surfaces scatter or transmit light, reducing reflection quality.

Light reflects off a mirror at the same angle as it arrives, relative to the normal (a line perpendicular to the mirror’s surface). This is similar to a ball bouncing off a surface.

A periscope uses plane mirrors to reflect light at specific angles, allowing users to see over obstacles like crowds. It does not refract, absorb, or disperse light.

Refraction occurs because light travels at different speeds in mediums like air, water, or glass, causing it to bend. Light does not stop, change color, or travel at the same speed across mediums.

Sofia sees the fish in a different position due to refraction, as light from the fish bends when moving from water to air, creating an optical illusion. The water does not absorb light, and the fish’s movement is irrelevant.

A convex lens converges light rays to a focal point, making objects appear larger. It is used in eyeglasses, microscopes, and telescopes. Concave lenses diverge light, and prisms split light into colors.

When white light passes through a prism, it refracts and splits into different colors (red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, violet) due to each color refracting at a different angle.

A rainbow forms when sunlight refracts through raindrops, splitting into colors, with the Sun behind you and rain in front. Snow, moonlight, or clear skies do not produce rainbows.

The Sun and Moon appear the same size because the Sun, though 500 times larger, is much farther away (150 million km) than the Moon (390,000 km). Their actual sizes differ significantly.

Earth takes 365.25 days (one Earth year) to complete one orbit around the Sun. 24 hours is its rotation period, 29.5 days is the Moon’s orbit, and 11.9 years is Jupiter’s orbit.

Mercury takes the shortest time to orbit the Sun (88 Earth days). Jupiter (11.9 years), Neptune (164.8 years), and Earth (365.25 days) take much longer.

The Moon takes 29.5 days to complete one orbit around Earth, defining a month. 24 hours is Earth’s rotation, 365.25 days is Earth’s orbit, and 88 days is Mercury’s orbit.

The waxing crescent is the phase just after the new Moon, appearing as a thin slice of light. Full Moon is a complete circle, first quarter is half-lit, and waning gibbous is three-quarters lit.

During the full Moon, the entire lit portion of the Moon is visible from Earth as a complete circle. New Moon is invisible, first quarter is half-lit, and waning crescent is a thin slice.

The Moon is waning when it appears smaller each night, moving from full Moon to new Moon. Waxing is when it grows larger, and converging/refracting are unrelated to Moon phases.