Investigation 1 Part 1 Where am i?

The course Over the next several weeks, you will be planetary scientists. We will be studying our planetary system and the universe. Introduce the course A planetary system is a star and all of the planets, moons, and other objects and materials that orbit that star. Until very recently, we knew of only one planetary system in the universe. That system was our own solar system, named for that star that rules it – Sol, the Sun. Even though many people suspected that most stars had planets orbiting them, we had no scientific evidence to support this suspicion. Now, with new instruments and clever techniques, astronomers have found hundreds of distant planets orbiting other stars, and there are probably billions more planets yet to be discovered in our universe.

Prior knowledge What is your cosmic address? Describe your location in the universe as accurately as possible, right down to this classroom. You have about 3 minutes. 2. Assess prior knowledge: quick write 3. Limit the scope of study Explain that it will not be possible to investigate every potential planetary system. The next several weeks will be spent investigating our solar system, and the objects and processes found there, as a model for other planetary systems. Then the class will peek out into the vast universe.

The pale blue dot What is the closest star to Earth? How many other planets are in our solar system? What other objects are found in the solar system? How big is Earth? 4. Introduce Earth Answers: The Sun, Sol Seven (Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Uranus, Neptune) Moons, asteroids, meteoroids, comets, human-made objects, dust, gases. 12,756 km in diameter; 40,000 km in circumference.

Frame of reference Everything has to be somewhere in the universe. This somewhere is called a location. Where are you when you are in science class? 5. Introduce frame of reference It is not possible to describe an object’s location without referring to its postion relative to other objects. As an example, describe your own location in terms of your immediate surrounds (e.g., in room 104, 3 m from the door, 1 m west of the short bookcase). Tell students, “The assemblage of objects, distances, and directions that you use to establish the location of something is called a frame of reference. A frame of reference can be tiny, like the inside of a shoe box, or huge, like the state of Texas, depending on what you are describing.” Ask 2nd question: Answer (varies): Room 224; Pine Middle School; standing in the front of the class near the projector screen; Washoe County, Reno, Nevada, USA.

Google earth What can you see in this photo? Can you find where you are in this picture? What name would you use to describe what you see in this image? 6. Use Google Earth Double click the name in the My Places pane. During the fly in, uncheck the checkbox in My Places, so students have to look for clues to identify their location. Zoom down to the building view at 100 m above the surface. Point out the Elevation number and the Eye altitude in the bottom bar. Check FOSSweb for updated instructions for newer versions of Google Earth. Show students the building view of their school at 100 m. Allow a few minutes for students to study the photo. Ask questions on slide Answers: Buildings, sidewalks, cars, etc. Students should be able to approximate the location of the science room in the image. Use the tool bar at the top to put a place marker in the school. The name of your school.

Point of view Where are you, the observer, when you can see the school this way? 7. Introduce point of view Ask question on slide (Answer: From above, in the sky, in an airplane) Tell students, “The term used to describe the position from which an observation is made is called point of view. Aerial photos such as this one, and tools such as maps, are prepared from a point of view directly above the area being studied, a point of view called a bird’s-eye view.”

Focus question What can you see at 100 m altitude? 1000 m? 10, 000 m? Tell students, “The view of the terrain below changes as you increase in altitude.”

Altitude and elevation Altitude refers to something NOT attached to the Earth. Elevation refers to something attached to the Earth. 9. Introduce altitude and elevation Point out the “Eye alt” in the lower right corner. Tell students, “Eye alt stand for the altitude of the observer’s eye. The building view of the school represents a view from a position just a little bit above Earth’s surface, at a low altitude. Altitude is often confused with elevation. The two words are commonly confused. We want to make sure we are all using the same meanings today.” “Altitude normally means how far something is above Earth’s surface – the distance between the ground and an object or reference point above the ground. Butterflies fly at low altitudes; jet airplanes fly at high altitudes.” “Elevation is how far a location on Earth, such as city or mountain, is above sea level. Elevation usually refers to a position on Earth’s surface. The elevation at the top of Pikes Peak in Colorado is 4301 m.”

Question How would the view be different if you looked down from ten times higher – an altitude of perhaps 1000 m? 9. Continued Refer to the building view at 100 m of the school on Google Earth. Answers vary but should include things like, looks smaller, we’d be higher, etc. They should also agree that we can see more of the area around the school. Zoom up to 1000 m and let students compare this image to the previous one.

Observations Building view Neighborhood view 10. Report observations Ask a volunteer to identify one object or feature they observed in the neighborhood image. Confirm that the object can be seen in the photo, along with many other things. Propose making a list of things that can be seen in both the building view and the neighborhood view of their school.

Record observations Make observations for the 100 m, 1000 m, and 10, 000 m view 11. Record observations Project notebook sheet 1, Bird’s-Eye Views, to show a method for organizing observations. Point out the two columns for observations. Allow a few minutes for students to record observations for 100 m, 1000 m, and 10,000 m views. More time is allotted later for the remaining views. 12. Discuss observations Uncheck the checkbox for the school in My Places so the school is not clearly marked. Project the image of the school at the community altitude (10 km), and invite a student to come up and point out the location of the school in this larger context. See if the other students agree. Ask if they can still identify their classroom in this image. Let volunteers make other observations, allowing time between reports for the class to confirm the observations. Students could use different-color pencils to add additional observations to their data sheets. Some features they might see include: Water, trees, streets, buildings, bridges, golf course, marsh, beaches, creeks, boat docks, etc. Ask students to compare the number of human-made structures versus natural structures that they could identify in each of the views. 13. Clean up (if needed) 14. Extend the investigation with homework Ask students to make a map of the school from a birds-eye view. After seeing the Google Earth image of the school, students will have a good start for the building shape. Ask them to consider shifting their perspective as they walk through classrooms and school hallways, to imagine them from a birds-eye view, and to add them to the school map. Collect the maps to assess students’ understanding before returning them to students to affix in thei notebooks. ---POSSIBLE BREAKPOINT---

How were the photos taken? Observe and discuss How were the photos taken? 15. Observe aerial photography Pass out the textbooks. Let them look at and discuss the cover Let them look at and discuss the table of contents Ask students to open to the photos “White House Neighborhood” and “White House Community” and think about how the photographs were taken. 16. Discuss aerial photography Give a few minutes to observe and then ask question on slide. Answers will vary but should confirm that either airplanes flew over the area with a camera or a satellite from space took pictures. Students may notice a patchwork of images. This is the result of photos being taken at different times. This could be days, weeks, or even years. (If date is known, it will be listed at the bottom of the Google Earth image.)

Review altitude What would the view be like if we moved ten times higher in altitude, then ten times higher again? 17. Review altitude Have students look in their notebooks for the definition of altitude. Remind them that altitude is the distance above the surface of Earth. The community and neighborhood photos were viewed at fairly low altitudes. Since the point of view is close to Earth’s surface, it is fairly easy to locate your school and, therefore, to answer the question, Where am I? Ask question on the slide. 18. Record more views of the school If students are working in pairs at computers, review the Google Earth tools and controls. Ask students to open Google Earth and continue zooming up to higher altitudes: 100 km, 1000 km, 10000 km. Otherwise, project the images for the class to see. After viewing the images from the three altitudes, ask students to make observation notes in the appropriate column on their Birds-Eye Views notebook sheets..

Review your observations How does the number of observations of human-made structures compare to the number of observations of natural structures as the elevation increase? How can you explain your observations? 19. Review student observations Call for attention and ask several students to read their observation entries, both human-made and natural, for each of the views. Ask the questions on the slide. Answers: The number of visible human-made structures declines as altitude increases, and human-made structures are no longer visible at the regional level. Human-made structures are too small to be seen as distinct, separate objects at this altitude.

More observations Where are you in the image? How accurately can you place yourself in this image? 20. Focus on the school Project the Google Earth image of your school, beginning at the 1 km altitude. Zoom out to 10 km and stop. Keep the marker on your school to aid in locating it. Make sure that other place markers are turned off by unchecking them in the My Places pane. (Use the Layers menu to turn off all labels except for Terrain.) Continue zooming out, stopping at 100 km, 1000 km, and 10,000 km. At each altitude, ask (on slide). Answers: Varies It becomes more and more difficult as the description of location becomes more general.

prediction If you were flying in a space shuttle, how much of Earth’s surface do you think you would be able to see? Write the above question and prediction in your “Observation” section of journal. Update after our discussion. 21. Predict space-shuttle view Ask question on slide. Have students write their predictions in their science notebooks. It is a common misconception of students and many adults that the space shuttle flies much higher than it actually does and that space-shuttle astronauts are able to view the entire Earth. TEACHING NOTE: To acquire an image of the entire planet, it is necessary to be 5000 km or more above the surface. Weather satellites orbiting at 35,000 km are able to obtain full-disk images of Earth. The first full-disk images of Earth were captured by Apollo astronauts on their way to the Moon in the late 1960s. Tell students that a space shuttle usually flies at an altitude between 220 and 400 km, with a few orbiting as high as 600 km. The class may decide to use an average of 400 km or one of the extreme altitudes. A space shuttle flies between the “area” and “region” altitudes (100 km and 1000 km). Instruct students to refer to their Birds-Eye Views notebook sheets and review what they would see at those altitudes. When they zoom to that altitude on Google Earther, they will probably discover that they can’t see as much of Earth’s surface as they thought they could.

High-altitude images Airplanes can only fly to about 20,000 m, and the next image is the view from 100,000 m. How could that be? 22. Explain high-altitude images. Tell students, “The image at the community altitude was taken from about 10,00 m, or about the altitude of a cruising commercial jetliner. No problem acquiring that phot from a plane.” Ask question on slide. Images from points of view that are higher than airplanes can fly are either digital images sent to Earth by radio waves from satellites in orbit or composites of smaller images that have been pieced together to look like one image. Google Earth images are a combination of both.

Powers of ten 100 m (starting point) 1,000 m (10 times farther away) 23. Review powers of ten Review all the work with images of the surface of Earth, starting with the school view. Tell students, “Each successive image of Earth, starting with the building view of our school, represents the view from a point of view that is ten times farther away than the previous point of view. Structures on Earth’s surface in the building view look ten times larger than the same structures in the neighborhood view. Structures in the neighborhood view look ten times larger than the same structures in the community view. Consequently, structures in the neighborhood view look 100 times larger than the same structures in the area view.” Review the concept of frame of reference, and describe the changing frame of reference as the distance above Earth changes. Students’ ability to accurately locate themselves in the photos becomes more and more difficult as they get higher.

Response sheet and focus question Answer the question with complete sentences and include: Claim Evidence Reasoning Add to your focus question afterwards Evidence, reasoning 24. Assess progress: response sheet Distribute a copy of notebook sheet 2, Response Sheet – Investigation 1, to each student. Collect after they are done responding. WHAT TO LOOK FOR Students write that a person’s specific location can be described in many ways depending on the particular frame of reference. A state is one frame of reference, and a country is another frame of reference. Students explain that both Florida and the United States can describe the same location. Plan to spend 15 minutes reviewing the selected sample of student responses. 25. Review vocabulary Altitude Bird’s-eye view Elevation Frame of reference Location Point of view 26. Answer the focus question At the end of Part 1 or the start of Part 2, have students return to the focus question. Students should summarize their findings in response to the original question.