This is a student lab that allows students to work with a many different materials that can be found in the average household and science lab. The students use their understanding of what transmit, absorb, and reflect mean to determine which of these wave interactions occurs MOSTLY with each material in the table. You can change the materials if you do not have some of the ones listed. There are analysis questions that follow that require the students to process what they did and prove their understanding of these wave interactions.

I emphasize to the students that they are first trying to identify which wave interaction occurs MOST with the material they are observing, but we then go back and look at them again with the idea that light waves can interact with these material in more than one way and that is where they then use the second column in the table to justify their choices of interactions. Make sure to have the students use scientific vocabulary and to provide detail in their evidence statement(s).

This should be done as an exploratory activity before the "Evidence of Reflection, Absorption, and Transmission Lab" that is available in the TPT store.