Visible Light
Light, Sound and Waves

Thinking about actions to take: Colours of Two Kinds

Teaching Guidance for 11-14 Supporting Physics Teaching

There's a good chance you could improve your teaching if you were to:

Try these

  • separating perceptual and spectral colours
  • introducing and exploiting a simple account of colour vision
  • introducing filtering colours as a process of removing certain frequencies
  • preferring frequency to wavelength
  • explaining in detail, on several occasions, why something appears the colour that it does
  • bringing to mind the psychological aspects of colour perception, perhaps by showing a few well chosen illusions

Teacher Tip: Work through the Physics Narrative to find these lines of thinking worked out and then look in the Teaching Approaches for some examples of activities.

Avoid these

  • conflating adding and removing frequencies
  • subtracting colours
  • trying to explain the rainbow, for most classes
  • reducing the complex processes of colour perception to simple physical principles

Teacher Tip: These difficulties are distilled from: the research findings; the practice of well-connected teachers with expertise; issues intrinsic to representing the physics well.

IOP AWARDS 2025

Teachers of Physics Awards

The Teachers of Physics Award celebrates the success of secondary school physics teachers who have raised the profile of physics and science in schools. Nominations for 2025 are now open.

Start your nomination now