The four lesson modules are structured in the following way. Catch the Waves introduces the students to the electromagnetic spectrum. Students will view the spectrum in its entirety and become familiar with the characteristics of a wave. Making Waves provides students with a method to generate waves on the screen. They choose the energy they want the waves to have, and then they are asked to measure the frequency and wavelength.
Students uncover the relationships among frequency, wavelength and energy.
Images of the sun in different wavelengths of the electromagnetic spectrum illustrate that the Sun and other bodies emit light in regions of the electromagnetic spectrum that our eyes cannot see. Students discover how the light emitted from the robot changes as they heat the robot to higher and higher temperatures. At each temperature, a graph pops up to show the amount of light the robot emits in each wavelength region. The students will be asked to relate the peak of the emitted light to the color it appears to us, connecting the color of a radiating object with its temperature. They will apply this information to plot the peak wavelengths of 4 stars of their choice, and then they will determine the temperature of each.