Lesson Plan

Activities for Home - Dark Skies

Night sky with stars, rainbow, Milky Way, and silhouettes of trees.
Grade Level:
Upper Elementary: Third Grade through Fifth Grade
Subject:
Literacy and Language Arts,Science
Lesson Duration:
60 Minutes
State Standards:
Hawai'i HĀ standards:
Strengthened Sense of Belonging
Strengthened Sense of Excellence
Additional Standards:
NGSS:
3-LS3-1. Analyze and interpret data to provide evidence that plants and animals have traits inherited from parents and that variation of these traits exists in a group of similar organisms.
5-ESS1-2. Space Systems: Stars and the Solar System
Thinking Skills:
Understanding: Understand the main idea of material heard, viewed, or read. Interpret or summarize the ideas in own words. Applying: Apply an abstract idea in a concrete situation to solve a problem or relate it to a prior experience.

Essential Question

How do humans and other animals adapt to the night?

Objective

Through a series of outdoor, nighttime experiments; learn how animals are active at night and how human eyes can adjust to the dark.

Preparation

  1. Check a website such as earthsky.org; https://nightsky.jpl.nasa.gov/planner.cfm; or https://www.space.com/ to print a star chart and find out what constellations are visible tonight. Are there any special events happening such as a meteor shower or visible planets? Will the international space station be visible from your location? https://spotthestation.nasa.gov/sightings/
 
  1. Collect materials: flashlight with red filter; pieces of construction paper of different colors or crayons or colored markers; small containers with lids; scented items such as cinnamon, mint, play-doh, vanilla; wint-o-green lifesavers
 
  1. Prepare scent containers – put one scented item in each container, close the lid and be sure it does not leak.
 
  1. Optional: If you have access to a smartphone or tablet, download a free star gazing app such as Star Walk or Sky View.
 
  1. Read this short poem by Wendell Berry:
“To Know the Dark"

To go in the dark with a light is to know the light.
To know the dark, go dark. Go without sight,
and find that the dark, too, blooms and sings,
and is traveled by dark feet and dark wings.”
 
("To Know the Dark" by Wendell Berry, from The Selected Poems of Wendell Berry. © Counterpoint, 1999.)
 
What do you think this means for your own exploration of the dark? How much do you see if you use a flashlight? Only that one circle of light, right? Find a safe place to stand or sit in your yard. You can use a flashlight to get there, but then turn it off and allow your eyes to adjust to the dark.

Human night vision can become as good as a cat’s, if we let our eyes adjust for at least 45 minutes in the dark.

If you do use a flashlight to read a star chart or find your way around, try to put a red filter on it. You can use red transparent plastic to cover the end of your flashlight and fasten it with tape or a rubber band.
 

Procedure


Go outside!

Night adaptation experiments – what do humans and other animals do to adapt to being active at night?

These activities are best done in this order. You can start with the first game while it is still dusk – just after sunset. Activities #1-7 can be done on cloudy nights or inside the house as well. Try to get to as dark an area as possible – a place without much artificial light. If outside, turn off house and lanai lights. If inside, a bathroom or closet can work well for #2-7. Assign someone in your group to read the instructions, using your red-filtered flashlight, as you go along.
 

  1. Bat/moth – Play this game with your family. Have you heard the expression “as blind as a bat?” Bats actually have very good eyesight, but they have other adaptations as well, like echolocation, which help them find their prey. Choose one person to be the bat. The rest of the players stand in a circle around the bat – they are the trees and are also responsible for keeping the bat safely inside the circle. Choose another player to be the moth. Use a bandanna to blindfold the bat. The object is for the bat to tag the moth by using echolocation. The bat says the word “bat” out loud. Whenever they say “bat”, the moth must quickly respond by saying “moth” out loud. The bat and moth can move around within the circle until the bat tags the moth. If the bat hits a tree, that person can gently say “tree,” but the trees should not get so loud that the bat can’t hear the moth. Once the moth is tagged, the moth becomes the next bat, and a new moth is chosen.

The ‘ōpe‘ape‘a, or Hawaiian hoary bat, is the only native terrestrial mammal of Hawaiʻi. Check out https://dlnr.hawaii.gov/wildlife/files/2013/09/Fact-sheet-hawaiian-hoary-bat.pdf
 
  1. Big ears – what are some other adaptations that help animals at night? Some animals have large ears that help them hear better. This can help them find their prey. Cup your hands behind your ears and listen to the sounds around you. Your hands act like satellite dishes, capturing sound waves better. Have someone in your group whisper a few words. Experiment with cupping your hands to listen to sounds in front of you, then cup them towards the back of your head to hear sounds behind you. What happens when you cup one forward and one back? What are some examples of animals with big ears?
 
  1. Wet nose – what is another sense that might help animals function better at night? Some animals have an excellent sense of smell, and they may have wet noses, like a dog. Try this experiment. Pass around your prepared scent containers. Ask everyone not to look at or feel for what is in each container. Try to guess what it is just by how it smells. Be careful not to take big sniffs, so nothing goes up your nose! Each time you try to smell something, do it once with a dry nose, then once with a wet nose (you can bring a tissue and soak it with some water, then dab it on your nose). Do you notice a difference? With a wet nose, the scent molecules are able to stick to your nose longer, giving you a better chance at identifying the scent.

By this time, your eyes are starting to adjust to the darkening sky. The rest of the activities will help you to see how your eyes are adjusting.
 
  1. Can you see colors? – Remember not to use a flashlight! Pass around the pieces of colored construction paper and see if you can tell what color each is. Or, pass around blank, white pieces of paper with crayons or colored markers. Ask each person to draw something, like a happy face spider, on the paper. Then ask them to write down what color they think they have. You can save these papers and check them later in the light to see how everyone did.
There are structures at the back of your eyes called rods and cones. Cones are most active when there is more light, and they allow you to see colors. Rods are most active when there is less light, but they are unable to see colors. Based on this experiment, which do you think is more active now, rods or cones?
 
  1. Disappearing heads – this activity will help you learn more about what rods are doing. Sit still and stare at the head of someone else in your group – someone sitting or standing at least 6 feet away from you. Do this for about a minute and keep staring. Try not to blink too much. What do you notice? Does it look like the person’s head is disappearing?
This happens because the rods in our eyes, which are most active now, are arranged in a ring around the retina, in a shape like a donut with a hole in the middle. When you look at something straight ahead, there are no rods in that center area to perceive it, so you form a black spot. When you really need to see something in the dark, you are better off using your peripheral vision – what you see out of the sides of your eyes. This can be helpful when you are looking at stars in the night sky.
 
  1. Luminescence – Get ready for some big words! Some living organisms emit light by their own natural processes. It is done for different reasons. For example, fireflies communicate with each other and attract mates by flashing light patterns. Ocean plankton, such as dinoflagellates, may do it to scare predators away. When living creatures emit their own light, it is called bioluminescence. Bio=living; luminescence=light. What other examples of bioluminescent creatures can you think of?
When a non-living thing emits a light, it is called triboluminescence. Tribo comes from the Greek word meaning “to rub.” In this case, light is produced when material is ripped apart, scratched, or crushed. It has to do with the breaking of bonds and static electricity. One fun way to create triboluminescence is to use wintergreen flavored lifesavers. If you have strong teeth, you can dry out your mouth by sucking in air or using a paper towel to wipe it. Then, put a lifesaver in the back of your mouth and chew with your mouth as wide open as possible. Do this with your family and look into each other’s mouths while chewing. Or, look at yourself in a mirror in the dark. To protect your teeth, you can also crush the lifesavers with a hammer or pliers.
 
  1. Pirate’s eye patch – If you don’t plan to stay outside and observe the night sky, you can end with this last experiment. Warning – it will ruin your night vision, so don’t do it until the very end. Have everyone in your group close one eye and keep the other open. Cover the closed eye with a cupped hand – don’t press on the eye with the hand. Once everyone has the one eye closed, shine a bright flashlight (don’t use a red filter this time) onto the ground in the middle of your group. Be careful not to shine the light directly into anyone’s eyes. Ask everyone to stare at the light on the ground for at least a minute. While you are doing this, you can start thinking about why pirates may have used eye patches. Did they all have injured eyes? Your cupped hand is acting like a pirate’s eye patch now. Once one minute has passed, turn off the flashlight. Everyone should move their cupped hand to the other eye, and open the eye that was closed. Switch back and forth between the two eyes. Do you see how far along your night vision has come?
The eye that was protected by the cupped hand was able to stay adjusted to the dark, while the eye that looked at the light from the flashlight is no longer adjusted. If you had to walk around right now, which eye would you want to use? There is a theory, tested on the tv show “MythBusters” (https://mythresults.com/episode71), that pirates may have used eye patches in order to always have one eye adjusted to the dark. This would help them if they needed to go below deck on a ship. They would simply move the eye patch to the other eye before they went below, and the one eye that was already adjusted to dark could help them move more freely in the dark areas below deck.
 
  1. Look up at the sky! See if you can identify any constellations – arrangements of stars that look like connect-the-dots animals or objects. Are any planets visible? Can you see the Milky Way? You can use a star finding app or your star chart if you want to see what is visible in your area tonight.

You can also create your own constellations and make up stories about them. If you stay outside for a long time, draw your own sky map and see if the constellations have moved since you first started looking. Have they moved or is it you moving on the earth?
 

Vocabulary


Diurnal – when animals are active during the daytime. Example: mongoose

Crepuscular – when animals are active at dawn and dusk. Example: sharks

Nocturnal – when animals are active during the night. Example: owls

Rods – structures on the retina (back of the eye) of animals that help with seeing in low light

Cones – structures on the retina that allow animals to see colors and details in higher levels of light

Adaptation – a change in a characteristic of an animal or plant that helps it survive in its environment

Echolocation – when an animal like a bat uses sound waves and echoes to navigate and find prey
 

Additional Resources

Later, you can look up the stories that different world cultures have created about the constellations. Here is a sampling of sources:

Hawaiian –
http://archive.hokulea.com/ike/hookele/hawaiian_star_lines.html
https://imiloahawaii.org/

Other –
https://stardate.org/nightsky/constellations
https://www.space.com/23309-constellations-night-sky-star-patterns-images.html
https://www.sciencefriday.com/articles/indigenous-peoples-astronomy/
 

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Tags: night night activity dark skies hawaii astronomy adaptations nocturnal stars constellations

Last updated: April 21, 2020