Archive for the ‘Meteorology’ Category

Blowing in the Wind

Thursday, November 13th, 2003

Windstorms swept across the eastern U.S. today, with winds gusting as high as 70 miles per hour. Almost a million people are without power. Learn more about the wind at the following Web sites:

  • Discovery School’s Capture the Wind - instructions to build a simple anemometer and measure wind speeds.
  • Wind Chill - learn the relationship between wind speed and temperature

    • .

  • Education World presents Wind and Wings - “simple hands-on activities that demonstrate Daniel Bernoulli’s principle of air pressure and air flight.”

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    Tornadoes in the Classroom

    Monday, October 27th, 2003

    Some heavy storms moved through the area today resulting in a tornado watch. The weather over the past few days has been pretty topsy turvy (see October 24th). I realize that I just posted some weather related sites on Friday, but today’s storm kept me thinking about how to bring “extreme weather” into the classroom:

  • NOAA presents an activity to “introduce you to the history of tornado forecasting, tornado formation and tornado safety.”
  • Scholastic provides instructions on how to make weather forecasting tools from scratch, as well as information about how tornadoes are formed.
  • The University Corporation for Atmospheric Research presents WebWeather for Kids with instructions on how to make your own thunderstorm, lighting and a tornado.

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    Weather in the Classroom

    Friday, October 24th, 2003

    Yesterday’s forecast included reports that it might snow in parts of New Jersey. There was no snow in the Princeton area, but there was a little bit of freezing rain/sleet as I was driving into work. Ack! I’m not ready for winter yet!

    Anyway, that weather report got me thinking about weather and weather forecasting. I discovered that ProTeacher has an extensive archive of classroom activities related to:

  • Weather

  • Weather Forecasts
  • Clouds
  • Hurricanes
  • Tornadoes
  • Water

    • They also have links to eight different resources for current weather forecasts.

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    The National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration (NOAA)

    Tuesday, September 16th, 2003

    I’ve got weather on the brain! The NOAA has a portion of their web site dedicated to education resources. They have sections specially for teachers and students, as well as a section with links to “cool sites for everyone.” For example, the “teachers” page has links to information on:

    • weather, climate, the oceans and satellites

    • special training opportunities for K-12 teachers (both NOAA and non-NOAA programs)
    • teacher resource centers
    • and more…

    Be sure to spend some time exploring the main NOAA site as well. If you are willing to do some exploring, you can find all sorts of fun and useful information (e.g., my family has a cabin on the Delaware River and we use the NOAA site to access interactive maps showing river levels in real-time, as measured by the National Weather Service.)

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    Tracking a Hurricane

    Monday, September 15th, 2003

    Here on the East coast we are bracing for the arrival of Hurricane Isabel. With hurricanes making headlines on the news, I thought it would be timely to mention that there are a number of different activities on the web for middle school and high school classrooms. The Education World site has some ideas for activities for younger children as well.

    Note: The picture to the right was taken from CNN.com. The caption given on that site is: “A view of Hurricane Isabel from space taken from the international space station on Monday. “

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