Topics in STEM: Meteorology for Middle School and High School

Topics in STEM is a series of one high school credit, 4-8-week studies that I'm doing with my girls this year.

First up this semester was a meteorology unit that I timed to work concurrently with the US hurricane season. I'd actually originally intended it to just be a hurricane study, but as with everything that we do, it quickly got out of hand.

Our spine for this unit was the Civil Air Patrol's Air Environment curriculum, supplemented with this home weather station, the Girl Scouts of Central Texas Hurricane Relief patch program,  and, of course, lots and lots and LOTS of other books, videos, and activities.

 Here's what we did!

DAILY:

Once a day on school days, the kids checked the following websites and recorded relevant hurricane information on our US and world map:

• Central Pacific
• Eastern North Pacific
• Atlantic

Twice a day, they checked our home weather station and recorded the current information about temperature, barometer reading, and rainfall in a daily log.

If there was hurricane activity listed in one of the websites, they'd consult with me about what major US city might be in the path of the latest hurricane(s), use the internet to check the current weather information about that city, and record its temperature, barometer reading, and rainfall in its own daily log.

WEEK 1:

The kids read the short Chapter 1 in Air Environment.

Syd watched BrainPop's Earth's Atmosphere video, and Bill Nye the Science Guy season 1, episode 9, "Atmosphere."

Both kids made a layered book foldable to illustrate and record important information about the layers of the atmosphere. They noted not just the order of the layers, but also the temperature differences between each layer and interesting facts, such as the layer where weather takes place, the layer that international flights take place in, etc. This was a handy reference for the rest of the unit.

Here are a couple of other reference materials that we used:

• Caesar's Last Breath: Decoding the Secrets of the Air Around Us
• An Ocean of Air: Why the Wind Blows and Other Mysteries of the Atmosphere

WEEK 2:

The kids read Chapter 2 in Air Environment.

We watched the first two episodes of Orbit: Earth's Extraordinary Journey, and the following YouTube videos:



The kids worked through several demonstrations of convection currents:

We also used chalk on a spinning chalkboard globe to illustrate the Coriolis Effect--

 --and a fan, tissue paper, and a mountain made of books to illustrate wind currents over landforms.

Here are a couple of other living books that we used:

• Come See the Earth Turn: The Story of Leon Foucault
• The Age of Miracles

WEEK 3:

The kids read Chapter 3 in Air Environment.

Syd watched the Wind and Temperature BrainPop videos.

We watched the following YouTube videos:

We used windbags to demonstrate Bernoulli's Principle:

We also played with our giant solar bag to explore how temperature affects air pressure:

It's a mini version of homeschool PE to get the solar bag inflated!

The idea is that early in the morning on what will be a warm, sunny day, you fill the bag with ambient air, then sit it in the sun. As the sun warms the air inside the bag, which is narrow and black, the bag will rise into the air, like your very own hot air balloon.

We didn't realize it until we went troubleshooting afterwards, but we accidentally put a small rip into the bag somehow, and that's why it didn't completely launch. Still, it worked well enough that the kids got the idea, and I *think* I repaired the bag well enough that we can try again some other time:

We reviewed the physics of temperature lesson that we completed about a year ago during another, briefer study of meteorology. It included making this working thermometer, which is still one of our favorite homeschool projects:

For math enrichment one day, I had the kids learn the conversion formulas for Celsius and Fahrenheit and complete some drill problems for practice.

Here are a couple of other reference materials that we used:

• Chilled: How Refrigeration Changed the World and Might Do So Again
• 50 Physics Ideas You Really Need to Know

Week 4:

The kids read Chapter 4 in Air Environment. 

We completed an activity to measure, demonstrated and record dew point using aluminum cans, ice, and salt water:

I didn't photograph the cloud in a jar demonstration that we did, but here's when we did it last year. The kids also conducted daily cloud observation, and identified and sketched the clouds that they spotted.

Here are some other reference materials that we used:

• The Cloud Collector's Handbook
• The Invention of Clouds: How an Amateur Meteorologist Formed the Language of the Skies
• The Man Who Named the Clouds
• Sector 7

Week 5:

The kids read Chapter 5, the final chapter, in Air Environment. 

Syd watched the Bill Nye the Science Guy episode, "Storms," and we all watched the final episode of Orbit: Earth's Extraordinary Journey on Netflix, and the Nova episode, "Decoding the Weather Machine."

We made a model of rain--

--and we attempted to demonstrate lightning, but it was so humid all week that there was no static electricity to be elicited, alas.

Here are some other references that we used in this final week:

• You Wouldn't Want to Live without Extreme Weather!
• Weather: An Illustrated History
• Why Why Why Do Tornadoes Spin?
• Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs

As one of the culminating activities of this study, I organized a field trip for our homeschool group to the studios of WISH-TV, one of our semi-local news stations:

I was surprised at how interesting this tour was! Little about the news station was how I'd expected it to be. There were remote-controlled video cameras on wheels, people doing other stuff just off camera at any given time, sets all over the room where the various anchors would just walk over and do their bits, and an entire kitchen set in which actual food is cooked on camera every day. It was absolutely fascinating!

Here's part of our group sitting quietly out of the way and watching the meteorologist give a report. Next to him is a screen that shows what's being broadcast:

The meteorologist is one of the only anchors who doesn't use a script. Here he is on the other side of the room several minutes later giving another report using a different screen:

Here, both anchor desks are off camera while an on-site reporter is being aired. See them both pecking away at their computers, working on their business? The screen behind that one video camera is showing the same script that's also shown on the front of the camera for the anchor to read:

Neither of my kids came away from the tour actually wanting to be a meteorologist or a news reporter (they were decidedly more intrigued by the cooking show host, though...), but it was a terrific way to see meteorology in action and to learn about one profession that uses meteorology.

We had a couple of culminating projects for this meteorology study. The kids made graphs using some of the weather data that they'd been recording for the previous five weeks. Here's one for temperature and one for rainfall:

 

It was interesting to see how the temperature trended, and how the rainfall added up. The girls compared the information to what they'd collected from cities in the paths of the various hurricanes they'd tracked during the course of our study. We could see some trends in temperature, since hurricanes develop over warm water, and, of course, we could see the Coriolis Effect in real-life, tracking how the hurricanes rotate and move.

The kids studied hurricanes in more depth as they completed their final culminating project, earning the Girl Scouts of Central Texas Hurricane Relief patch. They'd already done a related service project with their troop, so just needed to complete the rest of the requirements to finish earning the patch:

They learned how hurricanes form and how they are categorized by using the following resources:

• Weather Wiz Kids: Hurricanes
• National Geographic: Hurricanes 101
• BrainPop: Hurricanes

They researched how young people can contribute to emergency preparedness. There are online games for this, and an entire emergency preparedness high school curriculum if you want to go into even more depth.

They researched FEMA and other levels of disaster response and case studies.

Finally, they researched and compiled the supplies to create individual disaster kits for every member of our family. The goal was to create kits that contain enough supplies for each of us to shelter in place for three days, but also portable enough that we can grab them and go in case we need to evacuate, instead. 

We used these other reference materials while studying hurricanes:

• Hurricanes!
• NOVA: Killer Hurricanes
• Hurricanes: The Science Behind Killer Storms
• Hurricane Heroes in Texas
• What Was Hurricane Katrina?

Meteorology turned out to be a very successful study! It had lots of great hands-on and real-world connections, incorporated math and practical life skills, included some interesting documentaries, and led us on an awesome field trip that I never would have thought to organize otherwise.

Currently, I'm planning our next Topics in STEM unit, chosen by Syd. We'll start Programming and Robotics after Christmas!

Homeschool Science Meteorology Unit: Condensation Demonstrations

Temperature and water are the keys to weather, and modeling how they work on the small scale allows you to more easily use your imagination to see them happening up large in the sky.

Here's where we modeled air flow.
Here's where we modeled how temperature affects the flow of both air and water.

And here's where we model how temperature causes water to change states!

If you've got younger kids, I'd spend quite a while on the water cycle with them first (I really, really, REALLY like this water cycle dice game!), but with my older kiddos, we just briefly reviewed it as a reminder of the big picture, then focused on our models and how they scale up.

First up is a demonstration of condensation that models the dew point. The dew point is simply the temperature at which water vapor condenses into liquid water, and it's simple to model just by forcing a liquid to drop to a temperature cold enough to cause condensation. You need a metal can, crushed ice, salt (optional) to lower the water's freezing point, and a thermometer to measure the liquid's temperature.

This textbook is Air Environment, Module 3 of the Civil Air Patrol's Aerospace Dimensions curriculum. With supplementation, it made the perfect spine for a six-week meteorology study.

Fill the can halfway with very cold water, then add crushed ice by the spoonful, stirring, observing, and measuring continually. I did not want the children to use their thermometers as stirring sticks, but it turned out to be impossible to stop them, grr:

When the outside of the can is cold enough, water vapor from the room will begin to condense. You want to notice the exact moment that condensation begins to appear on the outside of the can, then measure the water temperature.

Will also wanted to measure her body temperature. Goodness knows where these thermometers have been, much less the fact that they're currently actively involved in a science experiment. And yet, my little mad scientists are difficult to subdue:

I made a point later in the day to show them the "Can You Lick the Science?" memes...

We tried a couple of other condensation demonstrations that are meant to model rainfall. For the first one, fill a clear jar maybe a third full of very hot water--

--then rubber band a paper towel to the top and pile ice cubes on top of the paper towel:

You remember from our convection current lessons that hot air containing water vapor will rise. It will meet the cold air at the top of the jar, at which point the water will condense on the inside of the jar.

That demonstration ran okay, but as the kids were running it, I realized that a solar still would make an ever better  demonstration, and so we built one! Sort of...

This is the same as the previous demonstration, except that I had the kids put a layer of plastic over the top of the jar:

Now, when they added hot water and cold ice, none of the hot water vapor could escape, and it condensed on the plastic, resulting in genuine raindrops!

You wouldn't have ice, obviously, on a solar still, but would rely on the sun to warm the water enough to cause it to rise and condense. Make sure that the middle of the plastic is the lowest point so that all the raindrops fall from there, and put another container below that spot to collect the water, and drop by drop, you'll have dirt-free water to drink.

Homeschool Science Meteorology Unit: Convection Currents

Weather is all about wind and water. Warmth goes up, coldness goes down, water vapor comes along for the ride, and studying the intricacies of these interactions is where the magic is.

Fortunately, there are several easy ways to visualize this interplay. These demonstrations are fun to do and fascinating to watch, and they help you understand convection currents.

First, fun times with convection currents in water!

You get yourself two bottles with narrow openings (these are vintage whiskey bottles from the old dump in the back of our woods, because I'm just that hipster and also that's what I had on hand, but plastic soda bottles would work just as well). In the bottom of each bottle, you put some liquid watercolor or food coloring. Choose colors that will blend well.

Start your kettle and make up a separate bowl of ice water.

When the water in the kettle is hot and the water in the bowl is cold, pour hot water in one bottle and cold in the other, filling both up right to the brim:

If possible, do this outside because you're going to spill.

Use a sheet of plastic or a playing card to cover the top of the cold water bottle, then upend it and carefully balance it upside-down on top of the hot water bottle.  Slide away the playing card, and watch the magic happen!



The cold water really wants to sink, and the hot water really wants to rise. Making them both do it through that one narrow opening gives you a chance to see it well:

We tried our best to leave the bottles like this for an hour or so, and over that time, as both temperatures of water even out, so will the color:

The next demonstration is hot water on top and cold water on the bottom:

There's nothing between them in that above photo--they just don't want to mix!

Give them some time, though. Look carefully in the below photo, and you'll see that the cold liquid is beginning to rise up, as the hot water cools down:

The level of water keeps dropping because the kids keep bumping the table and knocking the top bottle off...

My demonstration of convection currents in air got off to a very difficult start, as I hadn't anticipated that my eco-friendly LED light bulb wouldn't give off enough heat to spin the paper spiral that Syd hung above it:



Oops! The kids had the idea that maybe we could open the freezer drawer, put the light above that, and perhaps get enough of a heat difference that way, but that, too, was a bust. Fortunately, I also baked some muffins that day, and when I opened the oven door I had a revelation, called for both kids, and we dangled the spiral over the open oven door. There was so much wind that we could feel it on our faces, as well as see it in the mad spinning of the spiral. Success!

The convection currents that we made in a fish tank, though, were by far the best, and this demonstration has turned into something that is living on our kitchen counter for a while, because it's so fun to play with and experiment with and explore.

All you need are a fish tank or clear plastic bin with any amount of room temperature water inside, ice cubes made from colored water, and a different color of food coloring or liquid watercolor.

On one side of tank, drop just a few drops of liquid color. On the other side of the tank, gently place a few of the dyed ice cubes:

Observe:

You will see the cold, colored water sink and drift below the room temperature colored water:



You can experiment further by adding more ice cubes in different locations, gently pouring in dyed very hot water, and any number of other interesting possibilities, each time spending some time observing carefully to see what happens to the currents:

In the below photo, Syd had poured in a bunch of clear ice cubes, and Will had poured in a couple of cups of nearly boiling water, dyed black. And look--they made a thunderstorm!

The kids did all the other demonstrations with me happily enough, but they LOVED this last one. LOVED it. Will is applying for a Space Camp scholarship again this year, and she's already thinking about how she can transform this concept into an original experiment. The kids have more colored water in the freezer, and they're planning some more exploration later tonight.

It's the best kind of homeschool project: hands-on, sensory, cross-curricular, open-ended. It's fun enough that the kids might even forgive me for the book reports that I'm also making them write!

P.S. Want to know more about wind currents? Here's where we played with Bernoulli's Principle and built giant geometric shapes!