Published: March 15, 2006
Ms. Hemphill has invited one student, a sophomore in her honors chemistry class, to join her in her Spitzer project. The student has worked on rotation velocities and galaxy masses as part of her independent projects. The student was involved in the first outreach activity and helped set up the Spitzer materials for the Rose City Astronomers February meeting. She has started reading Sparke and Gallagher.
On March 20, Ms. Hemphill invited a trainer from the FLIR Systems to show one of her classes (15 students, a general science interim class) how to use a thermal imaging camera. She had the use of the camera for almost a week once she was trained in its use. She showed the video, "More Than Your Eyes Can See," to introduce IR. The FLIR trainer demonstrated how to use an older FLIR thermal imaging camera. She also made a Power Point presentation on the infrared and how it is used for thermal imaging. Over the days that they had the thermal imaging camera in the classroom, students took images of one another, of class activities, of chemistry demos (exothermic and endothermic), and of student presentations. Students demonstrated the use of the FLIR camera to a class of second graders (~16) and to a class of 5th graders (~15) and to several adults who visited our class. They also took "class portraits in the IR" of a second grade class of students in several different IR palettes and presented the best images to the class. The thermal imaging camera became a very creative tool-part science and part art.
On March 20, Ms. Hemphill invited the FLIR trainer to join her for an after-school workshop for teachers from her school and from nearby schools on IR and on how to use a thermal imaging camera in the classroom. They started with a showing of the video, "More Than Your Eyes Can See." Ms. Hemphill provided materials for teachers to use in their classrooms-printouts from the Spitzer Cool Cosmos site, including the "Teachers Guide to the Infrared." She also had handouts on "Thermal Imaging Resources for the Classroom" and "Mining the Online Astronomy and Educational Resources of the Spitzer Space Telescope Web Pages" (from web pages by the same name). The FLIR representative demonstrated the use of the thermal imaging camera and the procedure for calibrating temperature with color. The teachers (about 10 of the 16 who had responded) all were able to try different activities with the camera. Each teacher took images with the camera. They then brainstormed ways in which the camera could be used in different classrooms-from second grade classrooms to TAG classes to high school computer classes studying pixel images. Ms. Hemphill provided teachers with CDs of resources for use in their classrooms, including activities taken (and cited) from the "Infrared Zoo" of the Spitzer Cool Cosmos website. The most creative lab activity that resulted was one in which Alka Seltzer was dissolved in hot water and in cold water while the process was observed in the infrared. Not only were the colors (temperatures) of the two cups different, but the warm reaction, in the IR, looked like an erupting volcano. Several teachers indicated they plan to request the use of the FLIR camera to use with students.