Simple Science

SIMPLE Science is a project out of the Center for Image Processing in Education (CIPE). The lessons are web-adapted activities that resulted from CIPE's earlier work with teachers developing lessons using the freeware, NIH Image.

The lessons on this site are inquiry based. They could easily be incorporated into a constructivist classroom. The lessons would make an admirable learning center. This is a Java-based web application.You need broadband Internet access with a java-enabled browser. CIPE has been developing student inquiry activities based on manipulating and analyzing images. The lesson selected uses some of the historical image sequences of Eadweard Muybridge showing different types of animals moving, e.g. a horse, a man, a turkey vulture. Muybridge did not use motion cameras. He set up a series of still cameras that were tripped mechanically as the moving creature passed in front of the camera. In 1872 Muybridge was hired by then governor of California, Leland Standford, to answer the question of whether, at a gallop, all four of a horse's legs ever leave the ground. This is an inquiry-based activity that could easily be implemented as a learning center, incorporated into a cooperative group lesson, or differentiated to meet different learning needs. It is a rich activity that could lead to many different kinds of extension activities including research into the history of still photography and motion pictures, further inquiry into the concept of the center of gravity, and more experiments with animation. This lesson is one among a number of different lessons based on analyzing images.