Students explore light as they work to design a "patch" for a greenhouse on the moon that allows certain amounts of lumens and heat through.
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NGSS Performance Expectations
Summary of Module Activities
Science Investigation: Classroom Activity #1: Color Filters
Students explore color pictures to find hidden images and messages as they investigate the effect of color filters on the appearance of objects, creating a color filter chart to be used as a tool in the second classroom activity.
Engineering Design: Classroom Activity #2: Hidden Message
Students use their color chart tool developed in the first classroom activity to observe how light behaves when it passes through a filter to deduce the colors of an image of a Rubik’s™ Cube seen through colored filters. They then apply their understanding of light as it passes through a filter to design and iteratively develop their own color-coded hidden message.
MOXI Field Trip: Engineering Design Challenge: Lunar Greenhouse Patch
Students are challenged to design and test a patch to repair the greenhouse in the conditions of outer space using a model of the sun’s visible and infrared radiation, measuring tools, and a variety of sample materials available to the lunar colonists.
Reflection: Classroom Activity #3: Considering Tradeoffs
Students review the field trip engineering design challenge and are given a new, similar design challenge in which they calculate, rather than measure, the outcome of multiple design solutions. They then evaluate the solutions in terms of cost to determine which solution best optimizes the tradeoff between meeting the design criteria and minimizing cost.