Elementary school students can easily construct rudimentary weather instruments with household objects
Teaching students about the use of weather instruments to collect and evaluate weather data is a remarkably simple and inexpensive process. The materials you'll need are easily obtained at a supermarket or pharmacy. With these materials, you'll be able to construct rudimentary thermometers, barometers and anemometers for measuring temperature, air pressure and wind speed.
These finished projects work wonderfully when used simultaneously, allowing students to play the role of the meteorologist and collect different types of weather data each day.
Instructions
Make A Thermometer
1. Fill your 12-ounce bottle about 1/4 full with equal parts water and rubbing alcohol.
Add a few drops of food coloring and stir with a chopstick.
2. Place your straw into the neck of the bottle. Seal the opening at the top of the bottle neck with the modeling clay, molding it around the straw so that it stays in place without touching the bottom of the bottle.
3. Wrap your hands around the bottle and let your body heat warm the liquid inside. As the alcohol component of the colored water heats and expands, it will move up the straw.
Test your thermometer further by comparing the results obtained when placing the thermometer in direct sunlight and placing it in the shade.
Make A Barometer
4. Tape a straw to a ruler, making sure not to cover the numbers printed on the ruler. Tape this ruler and straw to the inside of your jar, leaving a small gap between the end of the ruler and the jar bottom.
5. Fill the jar half full of water, and chew some chewing gum to make it soft and pliable.
6. Siphon a little water partway up into the straw, not letting it reach your mouth. Quickly plug the top end of the straw with the gum to create an airlock and keep the water inside.
7. Make a mark on the straw with a permanent marker to signify the water level in the straw at the beginning of the project.
8. Watch the water level rise and fall with varying degrees of atmospheric pressure throughout the day. When the liquid descends, the atmospheric pressure is lessening; when the liquid ascends, the atmospheric pressure is increasing.
To calibrate your barometer readings, compare the liquid movements in millimeters with the changes in barometric pressure, and assign a correlating unit of pressure for each millimeter on the ruler.
Make An Anemometer
9. Punch one hole in the side of four different paper cups with a paper punch. Create these holes 1/2 inch below the rims of the cups.
10. Insert one end of a straw through the hole of one of the paper cups. Fold the end of the straw that is now inside the cup and staple this end to the opposite interior side of the paper cup.
Repeat this with a second cup and straw.
11. Punch four holes in the side of the fifth cup. Punch the holes 1/4 inch below the rim and make sure they're equally spaced from each other. Punch a hole in the center of the cup bottom.
12. Slide the exposed end of one of your straw-and-cup assemblies through two opposite holes in the four-hole cup. Push one of the cups with a punched hole but no straw onto the other end of the straw-and-cup assembly you just pushed through the four-hole cup.
13. Bend the end of the straw you just pushed through the one-hole cup and staple it to an interior side of this cup, making sure that the opening of this cup faces in the opposite direction of the straw-and-cup assembly to which it has been attached.
Repeat this step using the other straw-and-cup assembly and the last one-hole cup.
14. Position the four cups so that their openings face in the same direction around the four-hole center cup. Secure the two straws together by pushing a straight pin through the intersection of the straws.
15. Insert the eraser of your pencil into the bottom hole of the center cup, and push the pin you used to secure the straws at their intersection into the end of the eraser.
16. Place a fan on one side of the room, and mark a line on the floor with tape on the opposite side of the room, about eight steps away.
17.Turn the fan on low and position yourself on the tape line, holding up the anemometer. Note the number of rotations your fan makes in one minute, using the kitchen timer or watch. Move your tape line farther back from the fan if the anemometer is moving too fast to count rotations.
18. Repeat this step using the medium and high speeds. Average your results for each fan speed by taking three readings for each setting. Record your data, signifying average number of rotations for each fan setting.
Tags: atmospheric pressure, Repeat this, straw-and-cup assembly, construct rudimentary, cups with, each setting