CHAPTER THREE
MARIA:
Amelia, here is another photo from my Great Grandfather. Can you
go and find where this was taken and get a new picture. A picture of
what it looks like today?
BOBBY ROSS: (Staring up Ð loose string dangling from top of easel) My
Kite! My Kite! I have lost my kite! My camera was on that kite. Oh no,
how will I finish my painting of the park?
AMELIA: What are you painting? Why do you need a camera on a kite?
BOBBY ROSS: I am painting a view of the park from above. I am using the
pictures from my kite camera to help show me what things look like from
above. Why, before kite cameras people could only imagine what the city
would looked like from above. Let me show you one of these paintings.
(Bob turns to his easel, waves his brush, and says "Alakazandra")
BOBBY ROSS:
Before people had airplanes or balloons, artists painted these views of
cities from above. They called them ÔbirdÕs eyeÕ views. People wanted to
know how we birds see the city so badly, they would walk every street in
the city drawing the buildings. Then they would imagine themselves
flying over the city. They would paint what they imagined. This is a
painting of Manhattan more than a hundred years ago. Can you find the
tallest buildings? (pause) What shape are they? (pause)(Zoom into the
steeples) The tallest buildings at that time were churches with their
great pointy steeples.
BUT, this is only from the artistÕs imagination. What about a ÔrealÕ
picture of the city from above?
Once cameras were invented, people tried everything to get them up in
the air. Pigeons, balloons, kites and even rockets carried the cameras
up high. The camera for this picture of Brooklyn was up high on a kite.
If you look close, you can see the tops of the houses. The streets make
square shapes. We call those grid patterns. If you look even closer, you
can see there are no cars! No drive-ways! Cars werenÕt invented when
this picture was taken.
But people wanted to see even more of the city. They wondered how high
could they take a camera?
Years later, airplanes allowed people to take cameras even higher. Here
is a photo of the Bronx taken more than 50 years ago. This photo shows a
lot more. The river, the tops of buildings, the roads and bridges, and
look there Ð there is the baseball diamond in Yankee Stadium. Photos of
the city from this high help people figure out where to put new
buildings or build new roads.
AMELIA: Wait, I see something that looks like my picture. I need to find
the place this picture was taken.
BOBBY ROSS:
Hmmmmm. Yes. I see. (spoken slowly and drawn out as if Bobby is
thinking). Baseball diamonds. These are here in the park.
AMELIA:
I need to take a picture of them with my camera today. Can you help?
BOBBY ROSS:
Sure. LetÕs go and look at the baseball fields. There are some good
questions you can answer by looking more closely at the fields. You can
see different things about the fields when you take pictures at
different heights. If you are close you can see things on the field. The
higher up you go, the more of the city you can see around the fields.
Chapter 3 - INTERACTION A
Bobby Ross asks Amelia to fly down and take a picture of the people on
the field. CLICK. Bob says: From this view, if you are close, you can
see how many people are playing baseball. Can you count them?
Bobby then asks Amelia to fly higher to take another picture of one
whole baseball field. CLICK. Now you Can you see the whole field. What
shape does it look like?
Bobby then asks Amelia to fly higher to take a 3rd picture of the park.
CLICK. Now you can see how many fields are in the park. Are there more
or less fields than are in the old photo of the park?
MARIA:
Great photos. Now that we have a closer view, I can see the
shapes from my great grandfatherÕs old photo are baseball fields. But I
wonder what they look from higher up. Maybe NASA can help?
End of Chapter 3 - INTERACTION A
Talk with NASA Scientist
MARIA:
Hello Mr. Scientist (does he have a name?), I have another picture that
I need help with. I need help with another picture. Amelia found the
baseball fields that are in my great grand fatherÕs old photo. She took
some new pictures. One photo is so close you can count the number of
players. In Another picture is farther away and you can count the number
of baseball diamonds in the park. But what would these look like from
even higher.
SCIENTIST:
Maria, there are a lot of questions we can answer from photos close to
or far from the Earth. For some questions we need to be close, like
counting the number of baseball players. But what about the traffic
getting to the park?
A photo from higher up showing the roads around the park might answer
that question. But What if there is a lot of traffic and maybe not
enough ballparks. We would need to see the city from even higher.
Photos from above are used by city planners. They help them to help
answer questions like where to build new roads or put a new ballpark.
But what about questions We also get questions about the weather. Like,
will it rain tonight during our ball game? Pictures from our satellites
that are very high up, help us answer that question.
We have come a long way since we have used kite cameras. We can now use
images from satellites to forecast the weather. In this picture we can
see clouds heading for the city. This picture is too high to count the
baseball players or even count the baseball fields.
Would you like these images for your collection?
MARIA:
Yes, thank you for all your help. I can add these images to AmeliaÕs
photos.
SCIENTIST:
LetÕs put them in order from closest and farthest.
Chapter 3 - INTERACTION B
Maria sequences the pictures by distance.
IMAGES: 1. Photo of 7 bball fields 2. Image of the north end of Central
Park 3. Image of all Central Park 4. Image of all of NYC 5. Image of
East Coast Ð weather patterns
Distance sequencing task: A series of 5 images are displayed on screen.
The student drags and drops the images into place such that the pictures
are in order of distance.
SCIENTIST:
Try putting the pictures in order from closet to the baseball
fields to farthest away.
MARIA: Thank you for all the images and your help.
SCIENTIST: "Any time, Maria. Let me know if you need more help."
Back at MariaÕs Window
MARIA: Great job Amelia. Tomorrow we can look for the places in more of
Great GrandpaÕs photos.
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