Itās crazy that you recieved no readings. It would be interesting to test this experiment on a cloudy verse sunny day to compare results.
Great experiment especially for South Florida. It fits in with Earth Science when we talk about light. It is a great way to expose the kids to the different wavelengths of light without doing a traditional prism experiment. I was surprised with how efficient dollar store sunglasses are. The students will love being able to compare expensive sunglasses with cheaper versions. I like that the students create their own hypothesis about which sunglasses are most efficient. I think finding some crazy sunglasses would be fun. I really want to try it with a clear pair which I havenāt done yet.With most experiments the set up of the device seems to be a challange but this was much easier. I think there will be very few problems for students. The students really enjoyed watching how well each type of sunglasses did. After the initial experiment I tested a pair of wrap around glasses and skier goggles. The ski goggles did great!
JWeaver,
I like your idea of tying the lesson to photography using different lens covers. Your code of cooperation is a good idea for keeping all students involved.
I had one cheap pair of sunglasses I wear over my glasses, one pair (Stussy) that run about $100, and one pair of Native Wear that say All Polarized on the case. They are the most expensive and have different lenses, so I tried all of them.
The day was not terribly sunny, but not too cloudy either. The Native Wear were the best, but not too much better than the Stussy. With the different lenses, the LUX readings varied a lot, and I can say that the clear lenses must just be for fashion. I saw no difference in the UV ratingsā¦ What does this mean? Would it be different on a very sunny day?
I think this would be a fun experiment to try in the fall, and then in the winter when there is snow on the ground, to see if there is a difference.
This might be a good activity in the library since I have a door to the outside, but Iām not sure if students would just be interested on their own. I can see my science teachers finding it useful depending on what they are teaching.
I would just promote and facilitate.
I can see this might be easier if I had another set of hands, so students working in pairs would most likely be ideal. Being consistent might be the most challenging for students.
Photography! That is a great idea. We have a digital photo lab next door to my room. My knowledge of photography is not real good but that is no matter. I am sure the photo teacher would be more than happy to offer suggestions. We just had a conversation the other day of buying name brand or cheaper knock offs. This would be a great way to test and compare two similar pieces of equipment.
Thanks for the idea!
This was also a big surprise for me. I had some really cheap kids sun glasses that did terribly, but my middle cost sun glasses actually did a little better than my prescription ones. Shocker! Goes to show that you canāt trust perception, you have to really test things o find the truth. That is a life lesson that could be tied to this lesson.
Oooh, ooh, oooh! I see a great recruitment tool in this lesson. I want to use this lesson fairly early in the year (when it is still warm outside) and again late in the school year. Then I want to use the information the students learn as a recruitment tool for getting interest in the class. Our school has a carnival late in the school year. Students could set up and run a free sunglasses testing booth to let people know how well their sunglasses are actually protecting them.
Students could also set up a booth at the city fair in late summer to do the same thing and hand out information about our school! Because our school is a charter rather than a traditional public school, getting information about the school out to the community is always a big deal.
Iāll start by asking students to bring their favorite pair of sunglasses to class and let them take it from there. Iāll step in as needed to keep them on task and successful, but I think this is another experiment that will take less involvement from the teacher and will allow for more independent learning.
The most important part of this lesson, I think, will be the discussion at the end when we talk about what they learned and how it applies. I can see that this lesson should be followed closely by the sunblock lesson as well.
Iām so excited for this one! I think the admin is going to be totally stokedā¦uhmā¦I meanā¦LIT for this idea. 
that would be a pretty addition to this lab. Not only test sunglass but to also test Eclipse Sun glasses. It would be compare the real eclipse vs some of the fake ones that got sold during the US Eclipse 2017 hype.
1 ) Where does this lesson fit in with your curriculum (if the lesson is not a fit for the class you teach, how could the lesson be modified so that it is applicable to your curriculum)?
I can use this lab in my robotics class to teach a basic lesson on how sensors work. It also be used in my physics class when I teach the chapters about light. It is a quick and easy lab that my class can do and get very fast results. I also think my students will find it entertaining to test each othersās sunglasses. I would add the comparison between polarized and non-polarized glasses. Our light chapter in physics covers both luminosity and polarization. I actually think I might use this as an exploratory lab. Show them how the equipment works but not give them a procedure. This is a pretty straight forward lab making it a great experiment for the students to figure out on their own.
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Which part or parts of the lesson would your students need extra support in order to successful?
This lab is so straight forward that I do think they will need much extra support. I think that with one explanation, the class will very quickly be able to complete this lab.
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If you were to teach this lesson to your class, describe your role during the class. What does a successful teacher actively do during this lesson?
I would explain to the students how to work the sensor and make sure they understand where the UV and ultraviolet sensors on the board are located at. Other than that, I will walk around outside and make sure that they do not have any questions for me.
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If you were to teach this lesson to your class, describe your studentās role during the class. What does āstudent successā look like?
I would want the students to learn good experiment procedure with this lab, in addition to understanding luminosity. This is a good for the students to make hypothesis and come with their own experiment on how to test their hypothesis. Student success would be a well written procedure, thoughtful hypothesis, organized data tables, and well written conclusion.
I could absolutely use this lesson in my curriculum. We already do a UV - Sunglasses experiment in class where we use UV color-changing beads. The beads could be replaced with the sensors we used for this lesson! By using the sensor the students will now be able to collect quantitative data about the effectiveness of sunglasses instead of qualitative data. I am definitely going to use this for my Environmental Science class! 
Really like the idea of testing ski goggles! I think that goggles also have benefit of isolating the sensor from external light and getting more accurate readings. When I have run this experiment I tend to make experiment setup a focus. Challenge students to engineer some method (paper ring or other) to block external light from coming in the side of the lens, like the foam that goes around goggles. Plus keeping sensor in the same fixed orientation pointing at the sun for each lens tested.
Where does this lesson fit in with your curriculum
We could easily do this experiment in the Innovation Lab. I actually have a lot of spare sunglasses that I can donate to the cause.
Which part or parts of the lesson would your students need extra support in order to be successful?
I work at an elementary school and from what I gather, most of our students donāt wear sunglasses. They would have to be exposed to the reasons why sunglasses are important and what makes factors determine good eyewear protection.
If you were to teach this lesson to your class, describe your role during the class. What does a successful teacher actively do during this lesson?
I would demo the lesson and supervise the student projects. I think working with a team would be a good rule of thumb for our school so that students can collaborate and problem solve ogether.
If you were to teach this lesson to your class, describe your studentās role during the class. What does āstudent successā look like?
Students would need to be willing to experiment with an open mind. Unlike a lot of middle school or high school aged students, I work with younger kids who like to conduct coding experiments with little to no background knowledge about underlying science principles.
This would work great when we get to our unit on waves and light. I live in Florida, so we are almost always sunny here. Of course, this afternoon it was a little cloudy - but not too bad. I like that students can bring in their own glasses and test them and see how well (hopefully) they work. I woudl have students use some different colored plastic lenses from the lab as well to check and see how that would affect the readings.
I really think students would have fun with this, and I was surprised how the readings varied only when I used the give-away pair. My other pairs (Ulta, gas station) were close, and the Ray Ban was a little better, and the Costaās were the best. Which makes me happy because they are advertised to offer better protection!
There are some great videos on YouTube that show the impact of UV damage on our eyes so definitely that could help get the younger students to understand that not only do sunglasses make a fashion statement, they protect our eyes and some will be more effective than others.
Good to see the validation that what they were advertising was true!
Foggy days are the best day to test, right? I was able to get some readings and found slight differences between my 3 pairs of glasses. I had Vera Bradley, a bass pro polarized pair, and a cheapo pair. Very slight differences between the Vera Bradley and the bass pro pair. And only a marginally better gap between those two and the cheap ones! Interesting!
I think the students would enjoy this as an activity in the summer to test their own sunglasses. It would be even more interesting if we knew the advertised ratings for UV protection to use a comparison and to test whatās advertised. We focus more on light in the ocean in our classes, but this could be an additional short activity. And maybe convince some of our campers to actually wear sunglasses, hats and sunscreen!
Thanks for sharing! We do have a lesson on the science of sunscreen as well that you could incorporate https://ehub.ardusat.com/experiments/4529.
This was a fun activity. I like to see the data of the different glasses. This activity would be fun in the STEM summer camp. Let the students bring in their own sunglasses and let them predict which one they think will be the best and explain why. Have them go out and test their predictions. I think the students would enjoy this lesson a lot. I even tried out dollar tree store glasses (they were not good). We can even extend the lesson to a discussion of the importance to protect your eyes from the sunlight and the different effects it can play on the different colors of eyes.
Guys I can not connect my ardusat it seems to load the programs but it does not execute, I select the serial port and I run the ardusat experiment platform app and is not letting me. Any advice?