Strategies/Activities
Students will conduct several activities to demonstrate weather phenomena and make connections to the chemistry aspect of those activities. In incorporating the strategies using their interactive notebooks, students will keep all record-keeping, handouts, class work, and homework in their notebooks in an organized and prescribed fashion. The interactive notebook helps students retain information because it makes them revisit their notes by having them write questions, summarizing, and completing a creative aspect while doing their homework. The interactive notebook is based on the Cornell-style of note taking where notes are on the right, questions are on the left, and a summary section is at the bottom of each page. The top of the page has the date and the objective of the day's lesson.
Through hands-on activities, students will see Boyle's law at work, as well as Charles's law, and Gay-Lussac's law to make chemistry connections to weather phenomena. Students will make certain weather gauging instruments and be able to use these devices as a way to forecast weather. Students will keep a class calendar documenting temperature, barometric pressure, humidity, and wind speed. They will make observations and record the amount of cloud cover and whether there was precipitation that day, and if so, what kind. Students will also keep a record of when the sun rises and sets, which will come by viewing the newspaper daily.
Activity One
Students will make a bottle-balloon apparatus and heat, and then cool it and record results. (See Appendix for more details). Students will be introduced to the physical change of matter by changing the temperature, which will have a direct impact on pressure and volume of this closed system. Students will be able to relate this activity to what happens on Earth when temperature increases and how it affects gas and water molecules. They will see the connection of why clouds are usually up in the sky.
Activity Two
Students will make a rain gauge to begin recording the amount of precipitation on a daily basis on a data table and, after one week, will graph their results. (See Appendix for more details).
Activity Three
Students will discover that air has density by conducting an experiment using a deflated balloon and massing it, then blowing air into the balloon and massing it to see the change in mass. (See Appendix for more details).
Activity Four
Students will investigate how pressure and volume are related. They will see that, with an increase in pressure, volume will decrease. They will be introduced to Boyle's gas law that states that when pressure is applied to a certain amount of gas, that volume is inversely affected. Boyle's law: P 1V 1 = P 2V 2 . Students will use syringes to experience pressure and volume. (See Appendix for more details).
Activity Five
Students will perform the "egg in a bottle" experiment to understand Gay-Lussac's law which states that the pressure of a given amount of gas is directly proportional to temperature, if the volume stays the same. It is expressed as: P 1/P 2 = T 1/T 2. (See Appendix for more details).
Activity Six
Students will be introduced to the Kelvin scale and the idea of absolute zero by looking at the ratio of volume to temperature. Charles's law states: V = kT (where k is a constant) or, V 1/T 1 = V 2/T 2. Students will be given scenarios whereby they will calculate the volume of balloons if temperature changes. (See Appendix for more details).
Activity Seven
Students will explore how the ability to absorb heat and retain heat differs among different materials. This exercise will make students aware how land and water differ in their ability to store heat. This will teach them the concepts of radiation, conduction and convection. (See Appendix for more details).
Activity Eight
Students will learn about water in the atmosphere by modeling how fog forms. They will learn what humidity is and how it is measured and categorize three main cloud types. They will use a two-liter bottle, hot water and ice to simulate fog formation. (See Appendix for more details).
1 Raymond H. Davis, et al, Modern Chemistry.: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 2002, p. 303
2 Ibid, p. 313
3 Ibid, p. 313
4 Ibid, p. 317
5 Ibid, p. 319
6 Ibid, p. 322
7 Frederick K. Lutgens and Edward J. Tarbuck, The Atmosphere: An Introduction to Meteorology. Prentice-Hall, 1979, p. 102
8 Ibid, p. 102
9 Raymond E. Davis, et al., Modern Chemistry, Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, 2002, p. 365
10 Frederick K. Lutgens and Edward J. Tarbuck, The Atmosphere: An Introduction to Meteorology. Prentice-Hall, 1979, p. 30
11 Ibid, pp. 69-70
12 Ibid, p. 70
13 Ibid, p. 70
14 Ibid, pp. 70-71
15 Ibid, p. 76
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