Week 3 Pre-trip Report
8 Days and Counting!!!!
Since finding out we were accepted, time seems to have flown by. Over the past several weeks we have been frantically working with our students, despite the numerous snow days, to prepare for our big trip up to the summit of Mount Washington. Our goal is to have our students learn about the process of science by designing a weather station that can record data under extreme conditions. We have investigated active versus passive heating technologies with our chemistry and physical science students. Last week, we had a video conference between our students and Tom Padham, a meteorologist and education specialist at the Mt. Washington Observatory.
Figure 1: Students video conferencing with the observatory.
During this session, our students learned about the extreme conditions and the measurement techniques used to record data at the summit. They also learned how snowflake structure can be used to determine if the snow is falling or blowing.
Today, our students are getting together for the first time with their partners to design the enclosures to protect the data collection system and probes.
Figure 2: The brain, power system, and probes
Tomorrow the students will be constructing the enclosure and Friday they will be testing them using thermometers and Seek Thermal Infrared Cameras. Some of the probes are not rated for the conditions found at the summit at this time of year. It will be a challenge for the students to build an enclosure that will allow them take meaningful data which they will compare to the data taken by meteorologists at the summit. To help the students, we have also contacted local meteorologists from the news station and the airport to ask for their input and advice. It’s really cool that the Mt. Washington data is sent hourly to the National Weather Service for use in the various weather forecasting models.
This has been a fantastic collaborative learning experience and we’re are very excited for our extreme professional development opportunity next week. We can’t wait to see how or students projects perform under “the world’s worst weather conditions.”
PV=nRT,
Dumais and Muller
Since finding out we were accepted, time seems to have flown by. Over the past several weeks we have been frantically working with our students, despite the numerous snow days, to prepare for our big trip up to the summit of Mount Washington. Our goal is to have our students learn about the process of science by designing a weather station that can record data under extreme conditions. We have investigated active versus passive heating technologies with our chemistry and physical science students. Last week, we had a video conference between our students and Tom Padham, a meteorologist and education specialist at the Mt. Washington Observatory.
During this session, our students learned about the extreme conditions and the measurement techniques used to record data at the summit. They also learned how snowflake structure can be used to determine if the snow is falling or blowing.
Today, our students are getting together for the first time with their partners to design the enclosures to protect the data collection system and probes.
Figure 2: The brain, power system, and probes
Tomorrow the students will be constructing the enclosure and Friday they will be testing them using thermometers and Seek Thermal Infrared Cameras. Some of the probes are not rated for the conditions found at the summit at this time of year. It will be a challenge for the students to build an enclosure that will allow them take meaningful data which they will compare to the data taken by meteorologists at the summit. To help the students, we have also contacted local meteorologists from the news station and the airport to ask for their input and advice. It’s really cool that the Mt. Washington data is sent hourly to the National Weather Service for use in the various weather forecasting models.
This has been a fantastic collaborative learning experience and we’re are very excited for our extreme professional development opportunity next week. We can’t wait to see how or students projects perform under “the world’s worst weather conditions.”
PV=nRT,
Dumais and Muller
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