Organized by: Meredith Rawls, Lea Zernow
Here is a link to a star magnitude measuring device activity: http://data.nextrionet.com/site/idsa/How%20Light%20Pollution%20Affects%20the%20Stars.pdf .
It involves building a simple star magnitude measuring device out of cardboard and cellophane, and they could decorate them however they wanted. We'll do this last, and encourage the students to use the device to look at several stars in the constellation Orion during the week. Those who do the activity can report their findings at the beginning of the next week's session.
Other ideas
Meredith says: as a note, the "earth at night" poster I mentioned in class has activities for grades 5-8 on the back, and is probably too simplistic and lesson-y. I'll still bring the poster since it's a great visual though! Here is a link to essentially what it looks like: http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap001127.html .
Also, I (Lea) have a computer program (Starry Night) that can show the difference in the night sky with different light pollution levels via a cutoff for showing star magnitudes. It might be helpful if we need to fill more time.
Meredith Rawls: ooh, ooh, bonus!! let's put in a plug for "Earth Hour" (see http://www.earthhour.org ) on March 29! Let's print out a bunch of the postcards at http://www.earthhour.org/pdfs/WWF0089_Postcard.pdf and distribute them!
Darryl Yong asks: Where to get spectroscopy glasses?
Meredith Rawls: well the one pair I have are exactly like this: http://constellationx.nasa.gov/resources/glasses/index.html , but unfortunately they aren't taking orders until April 1 because they're so dang popular…
Lea Zernow: I have that pair too, yay AAS! I found a couple of other websites that sell them:
http://rainbowsymphonystore.com/difgratglas.html (35-40 cents each)
http://www.ucar.edu/sciencestore/item145.htm (40 cents each)
Darryl Yong: These two links seem to be for different things--should I get some of both or just one?
Meredith Rawls: Either one should be fine. They both look like glasses with (plastic) diffraction gratings for lenses, unless I'm missing something?
Darryl Yong: I bought 50 from http://www.ucar.edu/sciencestore/item145.htm
time | what's happening |
---|---|
3:00-3:05 | introduce light pollution - show poster and discuss night sky |
3:05-3:25 | build star magnitude measuring devices |
3:25-3:30 | hand out bulbs and spectroscopy glasses; have students compare the differences between sunlight or incandescent light and the fluorescent energy efficient bulbs |
3:30-3:55 | have each student design, build, decorate, and test a cardboard lantern/shield |
3:55-4:00 | clean up! remind the students to use their star magnitude device, and hand out earth hour flyers |