Starting to Plan Your Visual What medium will you use to make your model? (Drawing, animation, a physical model, an interactive model, etc.)

Ex. I will be making an animation to visualize the formation of the solar system.

What aspect(s) need(s) to be scaled to make your phenomena easy to see and understand? (Time, distance, size, etc.)

Ex. This process was very slow and I will be animating this process at a faster pace that is accurate to scale. This will make a very slow process easier to see and understand.

What are some limits you have to work within as you make your visual?

Ex. I won’t have time to make more than 100 slides for my animation. I will need to represent time in a way that will make sense with this many slides. Also my computer screen is not very big so I can only make objects as big or small as will fit.

Are there any aspects you are not representing to scale? Describe why or why not. (These will be limitations of your model.)

Ex. I will not be drawing solar system objects to scale for size. The animation cannot be larger than my computer screen, and if I show all the solar system parts to scale, some planets would be too small to see.

Determine Your Scale

Now, you will need to determine your scale. You must first decide what the scale of time, distance, and/or size in your visual will represent in the real world.

What maximum amount of time, distance, or size will you represent? For example, if you were animating a process that takes 100 million years long, then your maximum time would be 100 million years.

What minimum amount of time, distance, or size will you represent? For example, if the smallest time between two events in the process is 3 million years, then your minimum time would be 3 million years.

How will you represent this range of time, distance, or size at a scale that will make sense? How will you convert actual measurements to the scale of your visual? (This will be your conversion factor.) For example, if you were animating a 100 million year long process, you might decide that one second of your animation will represent one million years.

Plan to Scale Your Visual

Now that you have conversion factor, you will need to convert the actual measurements you gathered from your research into times, distances, or sizes that make sense for your visual. Use the chart below to organize your calculations.

One benefit of converting the actual measurements to an easy-to-see scale is that it makes this data easier to interpret. Using this data, describe similarities and differences between the events, objects, or distances that you will represent in your visual.

Self-Assessment

Consult the Modeling rubric.

What level of skill do you believe your work shows?

Explain your self assessment above.

Consult the Interpreting Data/Information rubric.

What level of skill do you believe your work shows?

Explain your self assessment above.