Interstellar is a new science-fiction film released this month, now paired with lesson plans created by Google-certified teachers. Interstellar lessons are developed for grades six through 12, and include segments covering a trio of subjects - science, arts and literature, and math.
The Biosphere Bottle Experiment with a Twist provides students with the instructions needed to build their own miniature biospheres, simulating conditions about spacecraft or future human colonies on alien worlds.
"One of the conversations at the NASA facility in Interstellar was on the concentration of certain gases in the atmosphere, and how that would affect life on Earth. So the question is this: If we changed the concentration of the primary gases of our current atmosphere, how would that affect the earth's ecosystem as a whole?" Interstellar managers wrote on the program home page.
The binary code lesson plan gives students a chance to send and receive messages in binary code, the ultimate basis of all computer code and programming.
Arts and literature are brought to the attention of students through lessons such as Plan A or Plan B, in which students examine and debate the decisions made by space travelers in the film. Cross-examination will take place between youth taking the lessons, along with examination of the driving forces between the decisions made in the accompanying movie.
To find the answer, students will build their own biospheres, then observe what increased levels of nitrogen and/or oxygen will do to these closed systems.
Children in middle and high school commonly calculate the weight of space travelers standing on the surface of planets and the Moon. Interstellar presents youth with the challenge of collecting data as a group, then creating a hypothesis about weights on other worlds. Students will then coalesce their ideas together, into a final presentation to be presented at the finale of the lesson.
The young learners will also get a chance to work with seniors, in the Human Memories experiment.
"In the film, senior citizens reflect on their time in the dust bowl on earth. Students will conduct interviews with senior citizens in their local community about a specific time period or incident that they lived though and their reactions," Google officials announced.
Interstellar opened in theaters on November 5. The apocalyptic film follows space travelers who travel beyond the galaxy, through a wormhole, in order to escape the destruction of the Earth. The film stars Matthew McConaughey (Contact), Anne Hathaway (Les Miserables), and Jessica Chastain, best known for Zero Dark Thirty.
Google is making it possible for schools to purchase tickets for classes or schools to see the film in IMAX theaters.
