After completing the “Start with the basics” section of "Get to the Root of It," students will be able to identify basic properties of light from the electromagnetic spectrum to refraction and reflection.

Content Standard B: Physical Science.
As a result of activities in grades five through eight, all students should develop an understanding of the transfer of energy.

• Light interacts with matter by transmission (including refraction), absorption, or scattering (including reflection). To see an object, light from that object — emitted by or scattered from it — must enter the eye.

After completing the “Light, color, and optics” section of "Get to the Root of It," students will learn about the science of light, color, and optics as they apply to telescopes from wavelength to light pollution.

Content Standard B: Physical Science.
As a result of activities in grades five through eight, all students should develop an understanding of the transfer of energy.

• Light interacts with matter by transmission (including refraction), absorption, or scattering (including reflection). To see an object, light from that object — emitted by or scattered from it — must enter the eye.

Content Standard B: Physical Science.
As a result of activities in grades five through eight, all students should develop an understanding of the transfer of energy.

• Light interacts with matter by transmission (including refraction), absorption, or scattering (including reflection). To see an object, light from that object — emitted by or scattered from it — must enter the eye.

After exploring the history of telescopes from Galileo to the Great Observatories, students will learn:

• How technological advances have improved telescopes.
• How science has advanced the technology associated with telescopes.
• How improvements in telescopes have allowed scientists to make new discoveries.

Content Standard E: Science and Technology.
As a result of activities in grades five through eight, all students should develop understandings about science and technology.

• Science and technology are reciprocal. Science helps drive technology, as it addresses questions that demand more sophisticated instruments and provides principles for better instrumentation and technique. Technology is essential to science, because it provides instruments and techniques that enable observations of objects and phenomena that are otherwise unobservable due to factors such as quantity, distance, location, size and speed. Technology also provides tools for investigations, inquiry and analysis.

3. The Nature of Technology:
A. Technology and Science.
By the end of the 8th grade, students should know that:

• Technology is essential to science for such purposes as access to outer space and other remote locations, sample collection and treatment, measurement, data collection and storage, computation, and communication of information.

Standard 1:
Scope of technology.
Grades 6-8
Benchmark F:
New products and systems can be developed to solve problems or to help do things that could not be done without the help of technology.

Standard 7:
Students will develop an understanding of the influence of technology on history.
Grades 6-8
Benchmark C:
Many inventions and innovations have evolved using slow and methodical processes of tests and refinements.
Benchmark F:
In the past, an invention or innovation was not usually developed with the knowledge of science.

After completing the “Start with the basics” section of "Get to the Root of It," students will be able to identify basic properties of light from the electromagnetic spectrum to refraction and reflection.

4. The Physical Setting:
F. Motion.
By the end of the 12th grade, students should know that:

• Waves can superpose on one another, bend around corners, reflect off surfaces, be absorbed by materials they enter, and change direction when entering a new material. All these effects vary with wavelength. The energy of waves (like any form of energy) can be changed into other forms of energy.

After completing the “Light, color, and optics” section of "Get to the Root of It," students will learn about the science of light, color, and optics as they apply to telescopes from wavelength to light pollution.

4. The Physical Setting:
F. Motion.
By the end of the 12th grade, students should know that:

• Waves can superpose on one another, bend around corners, reflect off surfaces, be absorbed by materials they enter, and change direction when entering a new material. All these effects vary with wavelength. The energy of waves (like any form of energy) can be changed into other forms of energy.

4. The Physical Setting:
F. Motion.
By the end of the 12th grade, students should know that:

• Waves can superpose on one another, bend around corners, reflect off surfaces, be absorbed by materials they enter, and change direction when entering a new material. All these effects vary with wavelength. The energy of waves (like any form of energy) can be changed into other forms of energy.

After exploring the history of telescopes from Galileo to the Great Observatories, students will learn:

• The major events associated with the development of telescopes from Galileo to the Great Observatories.

Content Standard G:
History and Nature of Science.
As a result of activities in grades 9-12, all students should develop understanding of historical perspectives.

• Occasionally, there are advances in science and technology that have important and long-lasting effects on science and society. Examples of such advances include the following: Copernican revolution, Galactic universe.
• The historical perspective of scientific explanations demonstrates how scientific knowledge changes by evolving over time, almost always building on earlier knowledge.

10. Historical Perspectives:
A. Displacing the Earth from the Center of the Universe.
By the end of the 12th grade, students should know that:

• Using the newly invented telescope to study the sky, Galileo made many discoveries that supported the ideas of Copernicus. It was Galileo who found the moons of Jupiter, sunspots, craters and mountains on the Moon, and many more stars than were visible to the unaided eye.

Science Standard 11.
Level IV (Grade 9-12) Benchmark 4:
Knows that from time to time, major shifts occur in the scientific view of how the world works, but usually the changes that take place in the body of scientific knowledge are small modifications of prior knowledge.

Language Arts Standard 7.
Level IV (Grade 9-12) Benchmark 1:
Uses reading skills and strategies to understand a variety of informational texts (e.g., textbooks, biographical sketches, letters, diaries, directions, procedures, magazines, essays, primary source historical documents, editorials, news stories, periodicals, catalogs, job-related materials, schedules, speeches, memoranda, public documents, maps).

After exploring the history of telescopes from Galileo to the Great Observatories, students will learn:

• How technological advances have improved telescopes.
• How science has advanced the technology associated with telescopes.
• How improvements in telescopes have allowed scientists to make new discoveries.

Content Standard E:
Science and Technology.
As a result of activities in grades 9-12, all students should develop understandings about science and technology.

• Science often advances with the introduction of new technologies. Solving technological problems often results in new scientific knowledge. New technologies often extend the current levels of scientific understanding and introduce new areas of research.

3. The Nature of Technology:
A. Technology and Science.
By the end of the 12th grade, students should know that:

• Technological problems often create a demand for new scientific knowledge, and new technologies make it possible for scientists to extend their research in new ways or to undertake entirely new lines of research. The very availability of new technology itself often sparks scientific advances.

Standard 1:
Scope of technology.
Grades 9-12
Benchmark L: Inventions and innovations are the results of specific, goal-directed research.

Standard 7:
Students will develop an understanding of the influence of technology on history.
Grades 9-12 Benchmark G:
Most technological development has been evolutionary, the result of a series of refinements to a basic invention.

Prerequisites
Students should:

• Be able to read grade-level appropriate material.
• Be able to interpret tables and charts.
• Have basic note-taking skills.
• Know that the electromagnetic spectrum is a continuum of wavelengths (also, frequency and energy), artificially broken into seven sections.
• Be able to explain that light travels in straight lines unless something alters its path.
• Know that mirrors reflect light, whereas lenses refract light.
• Know that telescopes gather and focus more light than the human eye can.

Common misconceptions
Students may think that:

• Visible light is the only type of light or electromagnetic radiation.
• All radiation is harmful.
• All parts of the electromagnetic spectrum can be viewed from Earth.
• Earth’s atmosphere, air pollution, and light pollution do not interfere with telescopes on the ground.
• Telescopes have always been powerful tools that astronomers use to look at objects very far away.
• All telescopes have the same design.
• Astronomers make observations by looking through the eyepiece lens of a telescope.
• Telescopes are built on mountains to get closer to the astronomical objects being observed.
• Telescopes are judged by their ability to magnify objects.