Rainbow Symphony Color Paddles Set with Diffraction Gratings

Crash course on how the transparent colored screens work (Review below):Our eyes see different colors as combinations of red, green, and blue, so those are our three primary colors of light. It's important to note that the color seen by simply looking through one or more colored screens is based on subtractive light, not additive (which is the paint mixing you might be used to as a kid). The red screen absorbs green and blue light, allowing only red light to pass through which is what makes it look red. Similarly, the green screen absorbs red and blue light, and the blue screen absorbs red and green light. Notice how these are all mutually exclusive, so if you stack any two primary color screens, all three colors should be absorbed and nothing gets through (note that these particular screens aren't perfect but they're close enough for just messing around). Meanwhile the secondary color set each absorb one color and allow two colors through: cyan absorbs red and allows green + blue, magenta absorbs green and allows red + blue, and yellow absorbs blue and allows red + green through. So for example, if you stack a cyan and yellow screen, then the common color that both allow through is green which is what you end up seeing. Or if you pair cyan (which lets green + blue through) with its complement red (which lets only red through), you end up with black (nothing getting let through; though again, these screens aren't 100% perfect). And that's basically it. Remember that these are all subtractive colors; if you want to play with additive colors (such as red + green + blue to make white), you could try it by shining flashlights through separate screens all at the same spot. Now time for the actual review:I may be an adult but I love color science and this thing is lots of fun for showing off properties of color light. The transparent color sets aren't 100% perfect since brighter lights still get through even when you stack combinations that ought to block it all out, but it functions well enough if you avoid bright lights for those exercises.The diffraction gratings are also really fun; I initially was looking for just one of those but got this set for the other goodies it comes with. There's a double-axis grating which is fun just to look at lights and see them make fancy kaleidoscope effects, then there's the single-axis grating which I like to use for light sources such as computer screens to see the way it separates the red, green, and blue light (compared to other light sources which may produce a smooth rainbow gradient). It doesn't give this information as precisely as a spectrometer or something but is good enough to demonstrate the idea.I'm not really sure if there's anything fun to do with the diffuser paddle besides simply demonstrating light diffusion.Lastly there are two polarized screens like certain sunglasses use.. These are fun since you can rotate them to make computer screens turn black, or to make glare off of surfaces magically disappear which is freaky. There are two of these paddles but they seem to be completely identical; I think it would have been a lot better if one of them was rotated 90 degrees from the other so you could show how that cancels out all the light without having to actually remove the paddles. My only other complaint is that the color sets are organized in the order red/blue/green / cyan/yellow/magenta instead of red/green/blue / cyan/magenta/yellow but I think that was just an assembly mistake with mine (also, there was a minor tear on one of the paddle frames since they're made of paper, but it's not a big issue)

I used this with the spectrometers and a flashlight. It helped the students realize that white light is a spectrum of colors. This is cheaper than light bulbs. I wish it was not paper/cardboard but plastic handles. It will last though. Great price and a great product. I wish I could afford more for the students but one set worked.

I bought this as a teaching aid for a color theory class. It just doesn't seem to read as well as the picture shows. I'm not really sure why...I tried it indoors in a bright light. I sure wish it worked better -I'd love to use it as a reference when showing kids how colors interact. When I overlay blue on red, it's almost black with a blue tint. When I overlay red, orange and blue to make brown, it's black. Color mixing doesn't work that way so I kind of feel a little irritated that these didn't actually "make" the colors that mixing paint would produce. I'm keeping them anyway, because I'm a total sucker for colors and just like having these around. I've also taken a couple of iPod Touch pix through them and they've been kind of fun.

Fun science tool for the kids and it’s great for exploring any light changesh

These were terrific for my daughter's science project. But I have to deduct one star because they aren't 100% perfect. For example, when you shine light through the Blue and Yellow filters, there is supposed to be virtually no light coming through the other side. In our tests, the color was a very dark green color. While this was close, it still required an additional explanation in her science project.Aside from that, we did love these paddles. They come on a post that can be unscrewed so that the paddles can be individually taken off the post. We've only used the 6 color paddles so far and have used the diffraction, diffusing, or polarizing paddles.I do highly recommend these... they are affordable, flexible, and quite useful for demonstrating several scientific principles. Just don't expect them to be perfect...

These seem to be very nice quality; a lot bigger than I thought but very functional and useful.

Probably.. it would be great to add a "rotating" capability to the polarized film paddles, without having to disassemble the item. To rotate the relative positions between the films

Cardboard frames and fan assembly are flimsy and the color gels are very thin.This won't last too long especially when teaching your kids about color and they want to handle it.