In 1998, my colleague, Forrest Mims, and I began a project to develop
inexpensive handheld atmosphere monitoring instruments for the GLOBE
Program, an international environmental science and education program
that began its operations on Earth Day, 1995. GLOBE's goal was to
involve students, teachers, and scientists around the world in authentic
partn- ships in which scientists would develop instrumentation and
experimental protocols suitable for student use. In return, data
collected by students and their teachers would be used by scientists in
their research. This kind of collaboration represented a grand vision
for science education which had never before been attempted on such a
scale, and we embraced this vision with great enthusiasm. Between 1998
and 2006, Forrest Mims and I collaborated on the development of several
instruments based on Mims' original concept of using light emitting
diodes as spectrally selective detectors of sunlight, which was first
published in the peer-reviewed literature in 1992. These instruments
have evolved into a set of tools and procedures for monitoring the
transmission of sunlight through the atmosphere, and they can be used to
learn a great deal about the composition of the atmosphere and the
dynamics of the Earth/atmosphere/sun system. If measurements with these
instruments are made properly, they have significant scientific value,
as well.