Arctic Wednesdays, March 8th pre-trip post (Week 5)

The idea of taking teachers up Mt. Washington during shift change was presented to the education committee early in the fall of 2016. The teachers on the committee thought it was a great idea and were quick to volunteer. As it turns out it did not take long for word of mouth alone to quickly fill all available slots. We knew there would be challenges and the first few trips have certainly shown that to be true, but we also knew there was some real opportunity here as well and the first few trips has also shown that to be equally true. What makes this more than just a winter trip up Mt. Washington (a cool experience in it's own right to be sure) is the connection it allows us to bring to our students. Science is and can be cool.  What better way for student to see that than to see what scientists are doing right here at the observatory.  I teach Earth Science to a small group of 11th and 12 graders. One of my main goals is to teach them how to make sense of scientific information. We are currently in the middle of our weather unit.  This was a great opportunity for me to bring data, and data collection alive.  We have spent the past few weeks graphing pressure, temperature and other weather conditions to see the link between the data and the observable weather.  But where does this data come from? To many of them, the data are just numbers on a page, dots that make some kind of pattern. A pattern that they often fail to even recognize on there own. Using the Observatory to bring what might seem like a mundane task of collecting that data alive has been invaluable. Last week I showed them the clip on the observatory home page about extreme Mt. Washington.  The clip shows the scientists going out in 80 MPH winds to change the precipitation can and scientists knocking the ice of the instruments in the tower. The instruments and the people that maintain them now come alive as something at least just a little bit cool. And that to an 11th grader ads a bit of cred to the topic of weather and little less "who cares".  With some editing help from the graphic students here at the high school I also hope to be able capture some footage of the trip to help highlight the uniqueness of the mountains condition and scientists.  As I write this the forecast is for a balmy 50 degrees and mostly sunny here in the valley and 30 degrees 75 mph winds and some snow showers at the summit. I figure that ought to do the trick.