Infrared Zoo Lesson 3 The Invisible Zoo

GENERAL INFORMATION

Title: The Invisible Zoo

Brief Description: Learners explore how infrared images give biologists/zoologists detailed information on how warm-blooded and cold-blooded animals thermoregulate.

Primary Goal: Use these activities to introduce learners to infrared imaging technology and the information that such images contain. Observation, compare and contrast, and reasoning skills are emphasized.

Activity Description: Learners become engaged in the lesson by discussing their favorite zoo animals and are led into a brainstorm of how animals survive in their natural habitats. Their first exploration gives them insight on the information that infrared images can yield. They take these understandings and apply them to infrared images of warm and cold blooded animals. They will explore how various animals in different habitats thermoregulate their internal temperatures and how this information can be discovered using infrared images. Various extensions into deeper content include characterizing habitats and animals of the future in the infrared, devising an "infrared story" about a "day in the life" of an animal in a given habitat, and becoming a consultant for a zoo design team and cold blooded animal habitat.

Learning Goals: Provided here are general learning goals for this entire lesson. You may have additional learning goals for your particular classroom and curriculum as these activities can be easily tailored to your own needs.

At the conclusion of this lesson set, your learners will be able to:

• Explain the differences between an infrared image and visible light image of the same object/scene.
  
• Explain that infrared light can be used to measure the temperature of an object. Furthermore, that this measurement is transferred to color codes when recorded by an infrared camera.
  
• Determine the warmer and cooler areas of an infrared image using a false-color map and a temperature scale.
  
• Demonstrate a few ways in which warm blooded and cold blooded animals differ when photographed with an infrared camera.

Target Audience: Grades 10-12

Teacher Preparation Time: 1-3 hours the first time, negligible time after initial use

Estimated Activity Time:

Day 1:
      - Engage Your Learners: 10-15 minutes
      - Explore Infrared Image Technology: 25-45 minutes

Day 2:
      - Visiting the Infrared Zoo: 45 minutes
      - Help Your Learners Explain: varies

Day 3:
      - Extend and Apply Understandings: time varies

Materials Needed:

• Internet ready classroom with workstations
  
• (optional) Ability to print off the internet in color
  
• (optional) Ability to make multiple color copies

Authors and Idea Makers

The ideas presented in this lesson are the collaborative effort of the teachers in the Invisible Universe Online course during the Spring 2003 semester. This particular lesson has been organized and written by Adrienne Gauthier (Instructional Technology Specialist, University of Arizona) with the help of Doris Daou (SSC/Caltech) and Linda Hermans-Killam (SSC/Caltech). This lesson has been evaluated by the Origins Education Forum at the Space Telescope Science Institute.

National Science Education Standards (NSES):

Changing Emphases (...More Emphasis On...)

The NSES envision change through out the system. Below are descriptions of how this lesson supports the changing emphases:

• Understanding scientific concepts and developing abilities of inquiry.
  
• Learning subject matter disciplines in the context of inquiry, technology, science in personal and social perspectives, and history and nature of science.
  
• Implementing inquiry as instructional strategies, abilities, and ideas to be learned.

Changing emphases to promote inquiry:

• Investigations over extended periods of time.
  
• Communicating science explanations.
  
• Doing more investigations in order to develop understanding, ability, values of inquiry and knowledge of science content.
  
• Public communication of student ideas and work to classmates.