Introduction To The Study Of Remote Sensing

Objective:
Students will experience what it is like to see only certain colors through "an instrument package" and why those instruments can only produce only specific colors on the pictures that they take.

Time Duration: one 50-minute class period

Grade level: 4-8

Vocabulary:
filters, camera, temperature, remote sensing, platform

Groups:
students are divided into three even groups, those with red glasses, blue glasses, and green glasses

Materials Per Student:
- a set of glasses, either red, blue or green
- various colored pipe cleaners

You should have enough colored pipe cleaners of different colors for each student to find several each.

Advance preparation:
The glasses that will need to be made out of straws and colored acetate; they should be made ahead of time. The glasses are made by cutting out green, red, and blue acetate in the form lenses like those of regular glasses. The ends of these lenses are stapled to the straight end of flexible straws. The flexible end is curled around the students ears to suit their faces.

The colored pipe cleaners need to be spread out ahead of time or when you take the class outside and begin the lesson.

Science Thinking Processes:
observing, communicating, comparing, organizing, relating, interpreting

Teacher Resources:
NASA pictures of various landscapes, particularly in the infrared and other technologies that show color as a variable in a picture. Aerial photos of various landscapes will be needed to give students a sense of the perspective of viewing the image from above.

Teacher Tips:
This is a game that should be played after students have had an introduction to light and color and remote sensing. Please let students simply have fun playing this game; don't over analyze what is going on.

Procedure:

1. Divide students into three groups: red glasses, blue glasses and green glasses.

2. Hand out glasses before you go outside.

3. Have pipe cleaners distributed on a green grass area before you take the students outside. The pipe cleaners should not be hidden from an over-head view.

4. Tell students that they will pretend that they are "platforms" that will search for things within specific boundaries that they can see through their colored glasses.

5. Discuss the rules of the game:
   • everyone must look through their glasses only
     
   • everyone will start at the same time
     
   • if you see a pipe cleaner, you must pick it up
     
   • hands and feet must be kept to themselves
     
   • when time is called everyone must come back to the starting point
     
   • stay within the outlined boundaries you set up ahead of time
     

6. Having outlined the rules, have students put their glasses on. They will be looking for pipe cleaners that they can see through the red, blue, or green filters of their glasses. They have to look down on the grass to find what they are looking for. If they see something resembling a pipe cleaner, they should pick it up.

7. Turn the students loose and let them find their pipe cleaners. Give them a reasonable amount of time. You know where you have distributed the pipe cleaners and you know how many you put out. When most or all of them have been found, blow a whistle and have the students come back to the starting point.

8. Have students come back inside and compare what they found with the students that had on different or the same colored glasses. What did they discover? Have a brief discussion about why this happened.

9. What conclusions can you draw? What would instruments on a NASA remote sensing platform be able to see if they were scanning in particular parts of the visible spectrum, everything or only certain things? What similarities are there between the students looking down and the NASA instruments looking down? Discuss the concept of scale with your students.

10. Collect the materials.

Extensions:

1. Use different colored fabric instead of pipe cleaners.

2. Draw a comparison with this and ask why some animal's camouflage protects them from predators or why some predators are hard to see by the prey.

3. Use the colored glasses to see secret messages designed by students.

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