< Remote Sensing

How to Teach These Units

Take a little time to prepare and get ready to teach. The pages linked below give you an easy-to-follow checklist and resources that get you prepared for facilitating PLANETS activities.

2. Lighten Up! Investigating Light

Learners investigate how light travels and how mirrors can redirect it to gather data from a distance.

Guiding Question

How can we redirect light to gather data from a distance?

Activity Downloads

Activity Timing

10 MIN. Get Ready & Team Up

25 MIN. Investigate Light

10 MIN. Reflect

45 MIN. TOTAL

Setup: Prep Time 30 min

  • Set up sample obstacle course and Materials Table.

*See Materials & Preparation in the Educator Guide linked above for full info.

21st Century Skills

  • Critical Thinking

Habits of Mind

  • Use systems thinking.
  • Investigate properties and uses of materials.

Learners Will Do

  • Evaluate the properties of light and decide how to place mirrors to redirect its path.

Learners Will Know

  • Mirrors can change the direction of light.

Connecting Across Activities

  • Activity 1: Sharing Experiences: Last time, learners shared experiences with, and stories about, technology.
  • Activity 2: Investigating Light: Today, learners investigate how light travels and how mirrors can redirect light to gather data from a distance.
  • Activity 3: Redirecting Light: Next time, they will design portable light redirection systems. These systems are one technology they can use when designing their complete remote sensing technologies.

Level Up!

  • As needed, allow learners to feel the obstacle course in order to become familiar with it. Also consider arranging your space to make room for accessibility devices. See our video on Supporting Learners with Diverse Physical Abilities.

  • Tell learners that there are lots of different kinds of telescopes, such as the James Webb Space Telescope, which includes 18 six-sided mirrors that unfolded into a giant curved mirror after the telescope was launched into space. Cameras such as the Context Camera and High-Resolution Imaging Experiment (HiRISE) onboard Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter use a complex system of mirrors to capture images in space. Explore more resources as an educator on our Quick Links and More Resources webpage, or have learners explore more on the Remote Sensing Learners website. (10 min.)
  • If learners finish quickly, challenge them to use fewer mirrors or to set the mirrors so that the image isn’t reversed. (5 min.)

  • Show the video Using Light to See Around Obstacles to help learners understand how systems of mirrors are used in technologies.

  • Refer to the Engineering Design Process (PDF) poster. Ask: What steps of the Engineering Design Process did you use today? (The Investigate step. We investigated how light moves and gets reflected.)
  • NASA uses special mirrors called retroreflectors to precisely locate places on the Moon. Read more about them here How NASA Uses Simple Technology to Track Lunar Missions – NASA. (5 min.)