The Power of Photography for natural event observation and measurement

In the most amazing use of photographic techniques I have seen to date, the 2012 documentary "Chasing Ice," currently available on Netflix, shows how James Balog has captured video evidence of climate change. He and his team set up a few dozen cameras in Alaska, Iceland, Greenland and Montana, to photograph what ice sheets and glaciers did over about three year periods. Hundreds of thousands of photos were taking by these cameras, and the team put together time-lapse movies. Simply staggering results, as we can all literally watch climate change in action over long periods of time (well, three years is long to most humans...but a fraction of a second to geological time).

While what Mr. Balog did is beyond what we can do in high schools, the techniques used might provide some of us with more ideas for research. Now that iPhones and commercial cameras that have come down in price to a couple hundreds of dollars have higher resolution capabilities, time lapse, panorama and slow motion features, high school students and teachers have some means of using this as a primary tool for research in just about any area of study. And with free online video analysis software such as Tracker, one can make time, distance, and angular measurements directly from video frames, so long as one captures objects of known size in the video in order to calibrate the measurements.

Be creative, and think about studying phenomena using video. Get time evolution profiles, size scales and how those change in your system. One can study any everyday dynamical system now, while in high school, with small budgets. On this CABS platform, most of the project options can use video measurements as the main source of data, and one can carry a portion of his or her lab in their pocket or purse - your cell phone or a small camera.

Note that our reach has extended now that cameras can be placed on drones, which are also coming down in price!

Use Balog's work, such as his TED Talk, as inspiration of what is possible, and just be observant of your local environment and find something interesting to investigate!