Spyglass® Transform Overview

Spyglass Transform® is commercial data visualization software used primarily by scientists and engineers. It has great of potential as a classroom tool for teachers wanting to integrate interactive modeling into their classroom.

Spyglass Transform® takes a large amount of data and manipulates it so you can visualize it in the following ways:

• "color rastered image" (A color rasted image is created because colors are assigned to numbers and the program then creates a colored image from an array of numbers)
• spreadsheet display of the numbers
• surface plots
• vector plots
• contour plots
• interactive line graphing

Hardware Requirements

The Macintosh version of Spyglass Transform® requires:

• Macintosh with a 68020 CPU or better and 4 MB Ram
• Color Monitor with at least 256-color capability
• FPU (Floating point Processing Unit) This is not required, there is a version on the program disk called "Spyglass Transform(noFPU)".

• IBM or compatible with a 68020 CPU or better
• Color Monitor with at least 256-color capability
• Math Co-Processor

Support & Distribution

Order software from:

Spyglass, Inc., 1800 Woodfield Drive, Savoy, Illinois 61874
(217) 355-6000

Cost? Call Spyglass to find out the current K-12 education price!

There are 3 software packages: Plot, Slicer/Dicer and Transform. Each is available separately or in any combination.

Help? Spyglass Transform® program comes with a very detailed, well written manual and Spyglass Transform Examples Disk. Chapter 2 in the manual leads the user through a tutorial that introduces the user through the use of the data visualization features.

National Standards

Use of Spyglass Transform® in the high school classroom conforms to the Benchmarks proposed by the American Association for the Advancement of Science's Project 2061 (Benchmarks For Science Literacy: Project 2061, American Association for the Advancement of Science, Oxford University Press, 1993, ISBN#0-19-508986-3).

Benchmarks specifically addressed by this application relate to:

1. Scientific Modeling

   Ch. 2 The Nature of Mathematics,(2C) Mathematical Inquiry, p.38. This section deals with how the work of mathematicians relates to development of computer mathematical and scientific models.

   Ch. 9 The Mathematical World, (9D) Uncertainty, p.230. Physical/mathematical models can estimate probability of real world events.

   Ch. 11 Common Themes, (11B) Models, p.270. Value of mathematical modeling in giving insight into real world phenomena. Computer use in performing computation-intensive operations. Use of models in prediction.

2. Accessing Electronic Databases from the Classroom

   Ch. 3 The Nature of Technology, (3A) Technology and Science, p.46. Emphasis of this section is the computational capabilities of supercomputers, access to databanks and other electronic resources.

Curriculum Ideas

Spyglass Transform® program should be introduced to the entire class as a teacher demonstration. The Example disk that comes with the product is an excellent resource for data and initial practice. After the introduction students should work in groups at a computer station to create their data displays and images. Students could take turns preparing their models and then printing their graphs and charts for analysis in a one computer classroom.

The following helpful folders are found on the Spyglass Transform Examples Disk:

• Monthly Temperatures Folder- Contains data files of temperature readings for two cities in Illinois. Chicago temperatures from 1936 to 1975 is provided in two data sets, one set has the monthly average. There are also two data sets for Springfield, IL. Once the teacher and students learn to manipulate this data in the tutorial, local temperature data will be available from the U.S. Weather Service.

• Thunderstorm Folder- Contains data files of a slice from a 3D numerical simulation of a thunderstorm. Shown is a horizontal cut through the base of the storm (near grpund level). The grid is 75 km on an edge. There are 5 files of data provided courtesy of Dr.Louis J. Wicker and Dr. Robert Wilhelmson, NCSA.

• U.S.Weather Folder- Contains the ASCII Text file"US Weather.Text", which contains weather information from 694 reporting stations on January 2, 1991. There are datasets available on temperature, pressure and maps of the U.S.

• Astrophysical Jet Folder- Contains image files of a simulation of the nonlinear growth of a Kelvin-Helmholtz kink instability in a Mach 3 supersonic jet. These datasets are courtesy of Prof. Michael L. Norman, University of Illinois , and Prof. Phillip E. Hardee, University of Alabama.

• Additional Examples Folder- Contains datasets to display: hydrogen orbital, radio map of M83, San Andreas Fault, neutron star and an interstellar shockwave.