(Work with one or two other students) |
There are a wide variety
of weather images available on the Internet and a great many uses for these
images. Use the web sites in RESOURCES
to acquire as many images as you can to create your own image library.
You can use this library to; study different weather features, illustrate
your own reports on weather, determine weather trends and compare
weather features in various places in the world to find similarities and
differences. All of these activities will make you more knowledgeable
about the weather.
TO ACQUIRE YOUR IMAGES
1
. Acquire the weather site on the web from RESOURCES
or
any other source.
2. Choose which type of image you want; clouds, lightning, tornadoes, etc.
3. Some image types are just pictures illustrating features, while others
are part of a CONTINUING SERIES of pictures such as those of clouds
over large surfaces of the Earth. These can be used to make ANIMATIONS,
which show the effects of change in the weather, over the time the pictures
have been taken. The nightly weather report on the evening news uses that
day's pictures to make short animations for you to see trends in that day's
weather.
4. Make a plan as to what kind of images you want. Decide what type of
images you are going to collect and what your collection schedule will
be.
5. The pictures illustrating weather features such as lightning and tornados
can be printed up on special paper so they can be posted on the wall in
your class-room or printed on overhead transparency sheets made for ink
jet printers. The better the quality of the paper the more the detail you
get. Also the higher the quality of the paper , the more it costs. The
paper printouts can also be kept in a three ring binder for reference by
other students. The overheads can be used by you or your teacher to show
everyone your pictures.
6.
Save your pictures onto a floppy disk or recordable CD as part of your
general image library. The sequential cloud picture in particular should
be saved in this way for later use in a computer animator. When you see
the moving cloud pictures on the evening news, they last for only a few
seconds because only a limited number of pictures can be taken each day.
The weather satellites take only a few pictures each day. But you can accumulate
as many of these images you want for as many days as you wish for your
movies. The only problem is that the satellites do not take visible light
pictures at night and the clouds are in a new position the next morning
!!
IMAGE
ANALYSIS
Once
you have acquired several images of more than one type, sort them by groups
( cloud pictures, Atlantic Ocean pictures, potential hurricane pictures,
etc.). Compare one day's pictures to the next day's to see changes. Where
do the clouds originate, where do they go to? What happens when they hit
a coast or a mountain range? Combine your general knowledge about cloud
formation, altitude and temperature, with what you see, to try to figure
out why the clouds form or disappear when they reach a certain boundary.
Try to get as much information as you can from your pictures by comparing
your cloud pictures with the general topography of that area. A great
many general topography pictures of many areas on earth can be found at
Earth
Images
Data Gathering Methods
To make weather predictions and understand the weather, many different
ways of gathering information are used. Collect as much information about
as many data gathering tools as you can find and describe in as much detail
as you can how each one works. The following table contains many such devices;
Polar orbiting satellite | High altitude aircraft | ship based stations | space weather observing satellites |
Geo-stationary satellite | pilot less airplanes | weather balloons | satellite ground stations |
Research air planes | Domestic airliners | automatic weather stations | air pollution monitoring stations |
International commercial airliners | weather buoys | ground based observation stations | rain gauges |
WEATHER IMAGE ARCHIVE
There
are many different types of weather images for you to collect . Once
you have collected them for a few days you need to make an image ARCHIVE.
This consists of your collection of images filed together in a notebook
in some sort of manner that you can find things later. You might want to
put all the cloud pictures together according to date or the hurricane
pictures according to the strength of the hurricane. Perhaps you want every
thing listed alphabetically. What ever organizational method you select,
stick to it and start to enjoy your collection. The first time someone
asks you to look up something for a report and you are able to find it
will make all your efforts worth while. One of the things you can do with
a series of pictures which are arraigned according to date is put them
in an animator and make your own weather movies. An animator is a piece
of soft ware which displays each image, one after the other, with a very
short time in between, just like a movie.
If you monitor a daily weather site on the Internet, you can get the weather
for your school. Ask if you can post the day's weather picture in a prominent
place each morning before you put it in your archive.. You may wish to
share this duty with other students. This would be a great opportunity
to start a WEATHER CLUB.
Cloud maker:
The equipment
you will need for this lab is:
To make
your clouds:
|
Optional:
If you drape a piece of black cloth or paper behind the bottle, you can
see the clouds more easily and take better pictures. Get out your camera
and take pictures of your clouds. If you take digital pictures, you can
turn up the contrast to make them easier to see with a image processor
in your computer.
If you can collect a lot of moisture from your large sponge, you may be
able to make it RAIN in your bottle. You need a very large container to
do this and you must condense a lot of evaporated water. If you make a
big chamber and put enough DRY ICE on the top, maybe you could make it
SNOW ! Make the smaller one work well before you invest the time and effort
into building a big chamber. It's very difficult to make it snow in the
bottle.
Making Your Very Own Tornado
Method One ( Water )
Equipment needed:
One three liter water bottle, empty and clean
A bucket to collect the water
Water to fill the bottle
Maybe a little coloring for the water and/or a light to light
up the water
A camera ( either still or video ) to take pictures of the 'tornado'
Directions:
Fill the bottle full of water
Turn it upside down over the bucket and let the water flow out
Observe the swirling mass of water and air bubbles inside the bottle as
the water leaves.
Take pictures of the swirling water
Visit this site to see how to do it vortex
Method
Two ( Moist Air)
You must build the special box illustrated in the picture. The bigger the
box, the better the results. Visit the Exploratorium
in San Francisco to see one six feet tall that you can get inside!
The idea is that warm moist air underneath is made to rise up to the ceiling by the fan at the top. The air inside the chamber is pulled out, making a low pressure zone inside the chamber. The slotted holes in the sides of the chamber allow ambient air to enter from the sides. The rising, moist air from underneath carries the sideways moving air from the sides up and the result is a rising, swirling air mass which exits the chamber at the top. There are no chambers in the atmosphere to make tornadoes but you might want to find out what a WEATHER CELL is and how it functions like a closed system. |
Vacuuming the Air
The objective of this lab is not to clean the air, it's to collect the dust in the air, so you can see what you are breathing.
Equipment needed:
An ordinary household vacuum cleaner
Some modeling clay
Two or three plastic drinking cups, all the same size ( Styrofoam or plastic
will do)
A box of facial tissues
A 6 in by 6 in square of stiff window screen
A sharp knife and scissors to cut a hole in the cup and to cut the screen
Directions:
Cut a 1 in round hole in the middle of the bottom of one of the cups
Cut a piece of screen big enough to cover the hole and put it in the bottom
of the cup over the hole
Cut a piece of tissue big enough to cover the screen and put it over the
screen.
Cut a matching hole in the second cup and place the second cup in the first,
so as to hold the screen in place.
Make a half inch clay rim around the end of the vacuum cleaner hose so
as to make a good seal with the inside of the cup.
Put the cup assembly ( it is now a filter) over the end of the hose and
push the clay into the bottom of the cup so as to make a good seal
Turn the vacuum cleaner on for five minutes
Turn off the vacuum and examine what you have collected on your tissue
paper.
Take several samples some with longer times, and in different locations
Use new tissue paper each time and make a record of all you do; how long
you ran the vacuum, where the sample was taken, what time of day,
what you saw in the air that might be in your sample.
You can preserve your samples by spraying them with hair spray or putting
transparent tape over top.
You can try to examine what is on your filter paper by looking at it with
a powerful microscope. Look for pollens, dust and animal hairs
Optional:
Take a plastic water bottle and drill a hole through the plastic cap, just
large enough for a cigarette to fit in.
Cut about six inches off of the bottom of the bottle.
Screw the cap back on the bottle.
Insert one of your filters into the top of the bottle so that you can pull
air through from a burning ( unfiltered ) cigarette
Light the cigarette and place it in the hole in the cap
Place the clay covered end of the vacuum hose in the filter and turn on
the vacuum cleaner, allowing the smoke from the cigarette to be collected
in your filter.
Examine what you have collected from the cigarette. Get read to hold your
nose !!!
Imagine all of what you have collected being collected in your lungs every
time you smoke a cigarette.
Hurricane
Hunter:
Visit one of the sites in RESOURCES which give
daily cloud cover pictures of the Earth's surface. Collect pictures of
the clouds over two or more tropical areas such as around the Caribbean
Islands. Collect pictures and carefully examine them for several
weeks. Carefully examine the pictures for "swirls", clouds which
rotate 180 degrees or more. If you see a cloud area which has a rotating
air mass of more than 270 degrees, go back to it later and examine the
next picture coming up. If it rotates a full 360, you may have found a
tropical storm about to turn into a hurricane. Keep watch and see if you
can recognize the shape. If you visit the web sites listed here about past
hurricanes, you will know what they look like.
Continue monitoring your suspected hurricane. If it clearly turns into
a rotating air mass, visit the NOAA site and see if it has acquired an
official name. Watch its progress and try to predict if and where it will
hit land. Watch the evening news and/ or the Weather Channel to see its
progress.
Make a report in class on how and when you discovered your hurricane.
A very exciting web site for hurricane watchers is HURRICANE
HUNTERS. This site is put up by the military service that actually
flies large airplanes through live hurricanes to find out what conditions
are inside them! They have current pictures from that day of what it looks
like inside the hurricane. Also they have a lot of very informative sites
telling you all about hurricanes. They also have great satellite
pictures of hurricanes as they happen.
Cloud
Chaser
When you have studied cloud pictures long enough, you will become familiar
with the predominate air flow patterns over the areas you study. Examine
other areas, such as the East and West Coasts, and over the Northern
and Southern borders of the United States to see where our
weather comes from. If you study long enough, you find that the wind changes
direction for different times of the year. Weather in other parts of the
world influences which way our wind blows, also.
Does air usually flow Southward or to the North?
Does it blow to the east or west?
If weather is coming from the North, does it stay the same or change
on the way to where you are?
Use your cloud picture collection to learn as much as you can about air
movement on a global scale.
Does air usually do the same thing each day or does it frequently change
direction?
Co-ordinate the Jet
Stream air flow pattern with the winds
on the earth's surface and see if there is a connection.
Once you have found the predominant flow patterns for winds for your area,
look at where your weather is coming from, how fast it's moving and try
to predict when it will arrive. This is the job of the weatherman, to predict
the weather !
Weatherman
Be
the weather person for your school. There are various ways you can do this.
a. Set up a WEATHER SHOWCASE for your school.
b. Place daily pictures in the case.
c. set up a place where you can post ' today's weather' each
morning
d. Take some of your favorite weather pictures and post them there.
e. Make a place for ' weather feature of the week' '. Write a brief description
of the feature and post a picture
F. visit other classes and make reports on the weather
G. Visit your local weather station and talk to the weather person who
is in charge.
H. Ask a weather person to come visit your school to
a. talk to your class
b. See what you have been doing
I. Try to start an e-mail dialog with a weather person at some far
away place, like the south pole!
J. Make your own predictions about the weather and post them. See if you
are as good as the tv weatherman.
On-Line
Data Sharing
While
the pictures you get from the net are the same for every one, the data
you collect about weather at your own school is not. It is unique to your
school and may even be a little bit different on one side of your school
than on the other. If you can form a partnership with several other schools
where each school in the partnership agrees that they are going to measure
the same weather factors, perhaps; maximum temperature, air pressure and
cloud cover, you can merge all the data into one big data-base.
Each day, or perhaps every Friday, each school sends its data to all the
other schools. When you get all your e-mail, you compile all that week's
data and make a weather map showing all the information over your geographic
area.
This is just how the weather people collect their data to report the weather
to you, only they have automated weather stations that automatically send
the weather information every hour all day and night to a central collecting
center and graphing software that automatically makes maps which display
all the data.
What can be a lot of fun to witness, is when a WEATHER FRONT moves through.
Usually the differences in temperature and pressure aren't much between
nearby schools. But when a front moves through, there can be big differences
and high winds because of these differences. Sometimes, when the temperature
drops suddenly, the rain comes and with the wind, it's quite an event!
Automated Weather Station
Perhaps, once your school has gotten into weather observation and reporting,
you may be able to purchase your own weather observation station and connect
it to your computer for automated data gathering. Once you set up all the
probes (temperature, wind, humidity, air pressure, rain, etc. ) you
must tell the computer how often you want it to take the measurements.
For instance you might want the data taken every half hour. Once you set
that value, it's all done automatically. The data is collected by your
station and every week or so, you download it onto the hard drive of your
computer. When you tell it to, the computer will make graphs which you
can print out, save or send to your partner schools.
Looking at
temperature and pressure graphs at the same time can give you an idea about
changes in the weather. Looking at several days of temperature graphs can
show you the daily temperature change pattern at your school. Each
day it's cold in the morning, gets warm at mid-day and then cools off in
the night and this pattern is repeated every day. All this information
makes it possible for you to make predictions, both short range and long
range, for the weather at your school.
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