Students will formulate a hypothesis from their observations and use more data to support or reject their hypothesis. The site offers water surface temperature satellite images of the Great Lakes and introductory material to read about the images. The site also provides a student handout to record information. Before students look at an image, have them read the introductory material provided on the web site about the satellite images, so they will know what the images are showing them.
Students are now ready to look at a couple of images and answer the questions on the handout.
Assign each student a Great Lake. Have each student select five locations on the lake that they can describe and find. Two of the locations should be near land and two should be in the open water. Next, the students will examine ten of the satellite images and use the temperature scale at the top right of the image to estimate the temperature for each of their sites. The students will record the temperature for each site on their handout and graph the temperature data they have recorded.