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Learning to Think Spatially: GIS as a Support System in the K-12 Curriculum http://www.nap.edu/catalog/11019.html SPATIAL THINKING IN EVERYDAY LIFE, AT WORK, AND IN SCIENCE 67 FIGURE 3.11 Cepheids in the Andromeda galaxy. Using the 100-inch Hooker telescope at Mt. Wilson, Hubble managed to measure the light curves of variable stars in the Andromeda galaxy, which he identified as Cepheids, and used to infer the distance to the galaxy. SOURCE: Hubble, 1936. 3.5.6 Thinking Spatially in Astronomy: The Role of Astrophysical Spatialization Astronomy has at its core a long and powerful practice of spatial thinking. Two factors enabled its advancement: (1) a careful and systematic observation of the heavens and (2) a series of intellectual breakthroughs achieved by some of the finest spatial thinkers in the history of science. Breakthroughs enabled astronomy to build a picture of the universe in space and time, starting from the seemingly simple observation of the apparent position and brightness of celestial objects in the night sky. The boundary of our knowledge of the four-dimensional structure of the universe spread out from Earth like a ripple from a rock thrown in the pond. Eratosthenes’ work provided a baseline, the shape and size of Earth. Kepler used the observations of Brahe to build a rational view of the spatial structure of the solar system and the motion of planets and other objects within it. With time, Copyright © National Academy of Sciences. All rights reserved.
Learning to Think Spatially: GIS as a Support System in the K-12 Curriculum http://www.nap.edu/catalog/11019.html 68 LEARNING TO THINK SPATIALLY FIGURE 3.12 The redshift distance relationship. This diagram shows that galaxies further away are receding from our galaxy at faster rate. The slope of the relationship is given by the Hubble constant (H) measured in kilometers per second per megaparsec. The inverse of the Hubble constant is a simple estimate of the age of the universe. SOURCE: Hubble, 1936. these efforts created distance scales to accommodate distances beyond the solar system: moving from the solar neighborhood to another spatial context, that of our galaxy, and finally, to a vision of an expanding universe enabled by Edwin Hubble’s work. At this scale, distance becomes time. Thus, spatial thinking brought us not only a picture of the spatial structure of the Universe, but an understanding of its history as well. 3.6 SPATIAL THINKING IN GEOSCIENCE 3.6.1 Thinking Spatially in Geoscience: The Operations As with any complex scientific practice, it is difficult to identify the component operations and impossible to specify a single sequence in which they are performed. Based on the experience of geoscientists, the committee presents a descriptive catalog of the spatial thinking operations typically performed in the process of doing geoscience. It is based on two categories of thinkers: expert geoscientists, especially those undertaking a spatial challenge that is novel to anyone, and beginning students, undertaking a spatial challenge that is novel to them. Thinking spatially by geoscientists and geoscience students involves, among other things, • describing the shape of an object, rigorously and unambiguously; • identifying or classifying an object by its shape; • ascribing meaning to the shape of a natural object; • recognizing a shape or pattern amid a cluttered or noisy background; Copyright © National Academy of Sciences. All rights reserved.
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