1. ENGAGE:
   There are several ways to engage students in this activity. You could start by showing The "A" Train Express, which can be streamed from the the Apple Learning Interchange or the South Carolina Educational TV website to show your students how math is important in the study of the Earth's atmosphere. This could be followed by the hands-on activity in the Educators Guide. Start the Laser Challenge web activity with a story. It could be based on the need for Norbert and Zot to measure the thickness of aerosols and clouds because they are starting a weather prediction business or some other better story you make up. You could ask what they think would happen to a laser beam as it passes through aerosols and clouds and move the discussion towards using a laser/detector system to measure aerosol and cloud thicknesses. Students will need to calibrate their laser measurement system first, so you might discuss calibration. Squeak, an engaging multimedia authoring environment, will grab the attention of young learners.
2. EXPLORE:
   In the Laser Challenge, your students should first explore by trying the various buttons to see what happens. There are directions in the active book in the activity when they get to the more serious business of calibration and applying math to understand and organize their results and predict new results. Have them work in groups on the first challenge with each member recording their data. By comparing their data, they can check each other. Within their groups and between groups, have them explore the analysis of the data they took and make predictions of what Zot will measure when adding the fourth cell to the test area. Next, challenge them to do the second Squeak challenge and to go on to the other challenges if the material is suitable for your students knowledge of mathematics. The whole activity is one big exploration in measurement, plotting, analysis, and mathematics.
3. EXPLAIN:
   To prepare students for an oral presentation, assign as homework the task to write out a presentation of their observations and analysis. Encourage them to accompany their words with pictures they draw. Have your students describe, discuss and explain why their data are either directly proportional, inversely proportional or multiplied by a factor as more test cells are added. They should explain what they observe clearly and note any mathematical patterns they see in the data. They should also explain how they made their predictions for the fourth cell and how their predictions agreed with their measurements. If you have your students do challenge 2, have them explain how they scaled their system and what they measured for the thicknesses of their unknown aerosols and clouds.
4. EXTEND:
   Close this window and follow the link in the Teacher Information area for a list of extensions. You should modify the suggested extensions to fit the class time you have available and based on the knowledge level of your students. Also, if you didn't do all 5 challenges, the ones you didn't do could certainly be extensions.
5. EVALUATE:
   Have your students evaluate how reliable they believe their data analysis to be. Have your students check the Internet to see how scientists evaluate similar data. They should compare the scientist's analysis with theirs. Go to the NASA CONNECT web site to have your students submit their Squeak projects from Challenge 5 if they do it and we will post them if they are good examples and give feedback. They can save their Squeak projects using the publish button on the navigator flap.