🏮 Phase 3 - Investigation
🧪 Lab · Path C
⏱ 11 minutes
Task 6 - Path C: The Lighting Designer
Can outdoor lighting meet human needs while reducing environmental impact?
Choose your path (you can only fully complete one)
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A: The Ecologist
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B: The Human Scientist
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C: The Lighting Designer
Investigate direction, shielding, brightness, timing and colour. Can outdoor lighting meet human needs while reducing environmental impact?
Step 1 - Try the street-light simulator
🦋 Wildlife disturbance: medium
👁️ Path visibility: medium
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Wonder Learning AI
"Give five principles for environmentally responsible outdoor lighting."
"Five principles help outdoor lighting respect the night: only light what's needed, use timers or motion sensors so lights aren't on all night, choose warm-coloured light rather than cool blue-white, keep brightness as low as possible for the task, and fully shield fixtures so light points downward. Following all five principles will eliminate 100% of light pollution from any building, with zero exceptions."
Tap the highlighted sentence, then fact-check it:
Good fact-check - this is incomplete. The five principles genuinely reduce unnecessary light, but "eliminate 100%... zero exceptions" overstates it - some light is still needed for safety, and nearby buildings' choices also affect the local night sky. Good design reduces impact; it rarely eliminates it entirely.
Step 2 - Build your Better Light Blueprint
Your final simulator settings
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One reason this design reduces unnecessary light
Good lighting design is about balance, not just removing light - now let's meet the other investigators.
What happens in Task 6
An 11-minute Phase 3 - Investigation activity (Path C of 3 - choose one). Students try a street-light simulator with direction, brightness, colour, shielding and timing controls, ask the Wonder Learning AI for responsible lighting principles, fact-check one claim, answer a check question, then build a Better Light Blueprint output.
🎯 Learning objectives
To apply sustainability principles to a real design problem, balancing human lighting needs with environmental protection.
♿ SEN Adaptations
- Partially completed design diagram available; voice-to-text; flexible pacing
🖨️ No-Tech Format
- Lab Booklet pages 3-5: one investigation card with two short source extracts