Cat’s Eyes Experiment
This activity is taken from “Let’s Go Live with Maddie & Greg”, a live family science show on YouTube!
“We love this activity because it shows us how the natural world has inspired human inventions!”
This activity is all about creating cat eyes using tin cans!
1. Take your tin can and push your bals circular card, with some blu tac on, to the bottom of the can and press it so that the blu tac sticks.
2. Cut out an eye shape in the middle of your bin bag plastic sheet.
Now place your plastic sheet over the top of the can so that the eye piece is over the top.
Secure the plastic sheet in place with the elastic band.
3. Turn off the lights in the room and shine a torch in the direction of the eye piece – you should notice that nothing really happens!
4. Remove the eyepiece and the circular card from the bottom of the can and replace it with the tin foil – push it to the bottom onto the blu tac. (If the bottom of your can is really shiny you may not need silver foil.)
Replace the plastic eye sheet and attach it with the elastic band once more.
5. Turn off the lights in the room and shine a torch in the direction of the eyepiece – you should notice that the bottoms of the cans is shining and reflecting the light!
Cats have many different skills. One is a righting mechanism, like a reflex, so if it is falling the wrong way (depending on the height it is falling from!) it can spin its legs round so that it will always land on its feet, or paws! Another special skill is that they can see in the dark. Have you noticed that when a cat looks at light their eyes become really bright? Cats (and animals that like to be active at night) have a special reflective layer right at the back of their eyes called the tapetum lucidum. This works a bit like a mirror, which helps them see better in the dark.
In the wild, cats are usually most active at dawn, when the sun is coming up, and dusk, when the sun is going down. Animals that are active at these times are called crepuscular. These times of the day are when they are more likely to catch their prey. Lots of pet cats like to be active at these times too, which is why you may have noticed similar activity patterns with your pet cats at home too!
In the experiment, the light from the torch is hitting the tin foil at the back of the can and it is reflecting off of the shiny surface. This is the same thing that would happen if you shone a torch towards a mirror. If light goes towards a cat’s eye it hits the tapetum lucidum and it will bounce back again. Humans have taken this technology to create the ‘cat’s eyes’ on the road – they work in the same way by reflecting light created from car lights as they drive towards them.
Our favourite fact
Cat’s might be able to see well in the dark but did you know they can’t see the colour red!
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Suitable For
Curriculum Areas
Curriculum Objectives
Year 3: Pupils should be taught to notice that light is reflected from surfaces
Year 3: Pupils should explore what happens when light reflects off a mirror or other reflective surfaces, including playing mirror games to help them to answer questions about how light behaves.
Year 6: Pupils should be taught to use the idea that light travels in straight lines to explain that objects are seen because they give out or reflect light into the eye
Year 6: Pupils should build on the work on light in year 3, exploring the way that light behaves, including light sources, reflection and shadows. They should talk about what happens and make predictions.
Year 6: Pupils should be taught to identify how animals and plants are adapted to suit their environment in different ways and that adaptation may lead to evolution
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