Synopsis: Following Thomas Young’s double-slit experiment in 1802, physicists began to favor the wave model of light, using the properties of a transverse wave to model phenomena observed in nature, such as refraction, reflection, and the Doppler Effect. Mathematically, trigonometric functions can be used to model periodic phenomena, such as light. My curriculum unit uses phenomena that change the amplitude and wavelength of light in order to discuss transformations of the sine and cosine functions, as well as using transformations to the sine and cosine functions to model phenomena in the natural world.