Leonardo da Vinci - The Visionary

  • As an artist who dealt in light, colour and movement, Leonardo da Vinci wanted to understand how nature produces all these phenomena. Do you know that he was trying to find the answer why the sky is blue?

    In the Codex Leicester, Leonardo da Vinci, writing after 1508, noted, "I say that the blue which is seen in the atmosphere is not its own color, but is caused by the heated moisture having evaporated into the most minute, imperceptible particle, which beams of the solar rays attract and cause to seem luminous against the deep, intense darkness of the region of fire that forms a covering above them." 

    He also was the first who thought about eye lenses.

    He made a sketch of the anemometer an instrument for measuring the speed of wind. Da Vinci made the following notes: "For measuring distance traversed per hour with the force of the wind. Here a clock for showing time is required."

    Leonardo described water as "the vehicle of nature" ("vetturale di natura"), believing water to be to the world what blood is to our bodies. As Leonardo understood it, water circulated according to fixed rules. It fell as rain or snow, springs from the ground, and runs in streams and rivers to the vast reservoir of the seas.

    Each country has a team of students and one of them is the coordinator student or leader. The coordinator writes Twinspace username and the TS usernames of the members of the country team in the suitable group on the padlet. Only the coordinating student or leader is allowed to contact the coordinator teacher.  Not every country has to be written in every group, your teacher will tell you which is the most suitable for you. Once you join a group you will have to choose a leader from your country which is the student that will be allowed to ask for help to the coordinating teacher.

    Each group must work cooperatively so that the final product is a joint presentation when the next mobility takes place. In this presentation, you must respond to all the questions raised. It is necessary to justify each response, at least, with an experimental resource.

    TASK 1: Find the answer: (Xavier)

    - Why the sky is blue?

    - Why do we see things of a certain color?

    - How can it make a rainbow?

    - How does the light travel?

    - Play with prism.

    TASK 2: Find the answer: (Ania&Gosia)

    - How does the human eye work?  

    - Why do leaves look green and tomato red?

    - Why do your legs look crooked underwater?

    - Why do we sometimes need lenses? How do they work ?

    - Make the sketch or a model of the eye.

    Go to the subpage 1 or subpage 2 to know more about the tasks