Mapping Unseen Landforms

Background/Rationale

How do robot eyes and sophisticated computers allow the researchers to use in building a robotic arm: suggest salad tongs, and chopstick create a "virtual environment," like the one you saw when the TROV left Dale and dove to the bottom of McMurdo Sound? In this activity students will simulate data collection from a distant land form and use this data to build their own "virtual environment."

Objectives

Vocabulary

Materials (per team of 3 or 4)

Preparation

Before this activity, have your students bring in shoe boxes with lids. Collect enough for each team to have one. Group students into teams of 3 or 4.

Class Activity

  1. The teams will be simulating the mapping of a distant site. Have them first create an "alien" landform out of newspaper, clay, and rocks in the bottom of their shoe boxes. Encourage them to create landscapes that have distinct differences in elevations such as may be found on Earth or Mars. They should not show their unique "planet" to any other team.
  2. Have student teams draw a 1 cm. grid on the shoe box lid, and then punch a hole big enough for the coat hanger or dowel to pass through at each intersection. The team should also draw a matching grid on the blank sheet of paper, labeling the top axis "a, b, c, d..." etc., and "0, 1, 2, 3..." etc. up from the bottom of the left hand side. Set the boxes aside to dry overnight in a warm location.
  3. When the "landforms" are dry, tape the lids securely on the boxes and distribute to other student teams that have not seen the them. Have these new teams use their coat hanger wire or dowel to probe down through the holes in the lid to find the depth of the land beneath each hole. Using the tape measure or ruler, they record the information on their graph paper for each hole or "data point."
  4. This topographical information can either be mapped or modeled. To create a contour map, have students draw lines on their paper through points on the grid with equal measurements. You will probably have to tell them to group all measurements within, say, 2 cm. to the next highest number, an example of how map-making approximates "ground truth." Students may create a realistic landscape by cutting straws to match the depth measurements, mounting them on cardboard and then building up clay or papier mache around them to create a 3- dimensional model. Paint the resulting landform to match the colors of Mars, as seen in the DISCOVERING MARS pamphlet, provided along with this Guide. This process is very similar to that used to create the landscapes modeled by computer in "MARS THE MOVIE", the exciting fly- over the Red Planet created by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory excerpted in the videos or available via NASA's Teacher Resource Centers. (For addresses, see below.)

Wrap Up

Have the teams uncover their boxes to see how accurate their maps or models were.

Follow Up Discussion/Journal Entry

Evaluate the mapping procedure. Were the holes close enough to detect changes in elevation? What would have been lost if the holes were 2 cm. apart? 5 cm. apart? At what "lower resolution" would they have missed seeing something significant?

Options

Use actual topographic data to create a model of a landform. Provided with : this package is a segment of a contour map (created by the U.S. Geological Survey from NASA data) of Olympus Mons, a Martian volcano nearly three times higher than Mount Everest. Have students place this handout over sheets of thick cardboard and - by pressing through the paper with a sharp pencil or with a pin - outline the contour lines. Depending on the amount of time available to the class (and the amount of cardboard!) use lines 5,000 meters (resulting in fewer "steps") or 1,000 meters apart (which will give a more realistic outline). Paint the resulting model.

Suggest to students that the appearance of their model depends on the scale chosen to make it. Thicker cardboard will create a more dramatic impression. In fact, JPL scientists exaggerated the apparent height of Olympus Mons in just this way, to make the fly-over more impressive. The "facts" remain precisely accurate: the "scaling factors" alter the graphic results and visual effects.

Follow Mapping Unseen Landforms, with Creating and Exploring a Virtual Environment .

This lesson adapted from the "Life From... Other Worlds" Teacher's guide.

November 1993 GHSP/INNERSPACE FOUNDATION
THE "LIVE FROM... OTHER WORLDS" PROJECT
PROJECT DIRECTOR & EXECUTIVE PRODUCER Geoffrey Haines-Stiles