Teaching and Learning Focus

In this investigation, your students will explore the effect of temperature on air pressure:

• Changing air temperature changes the space taken up by the air.
• Changing air temperature changes the pressure exerted by air.

Materials Needed

For two demonstrations:

Teaching and Learning Focus

In this investigation, your students will begin to develop their concept of how the interaction of moving air (wind) and water can affect heat transfer:

• Water will evaporate more quickly when air is moving rapidly over its surface.
• When water evaporates from a surface (such as your hand), heat is also removed from that surface.

Materials Needed

For each student pair:

Introduction

© Michael Collier

Linking to Weather

After helping your students to understand the nature and composition of clouds, you can make a smooth transition to a discussion of precipitation. A thorough understanding of the physical conditions favoring various forms of precipitation is probably beyond the scope of the elementary science curriculum, but what they investigate here will provide some building blocks for this to happen at a later stage.

Here are some questions for your students to consider (with explanations in italics):

Teaching and Learning Focus

In this investigation, your students will begin to develop their concept of clouds based upon three basic observations:

• Warm air can contain more water vapor than cold air.
• When air loses heat, some of the water in the air turns to liquid.
• As air loses heat, droplets of water collect and become visible on solid surfaces.

Materials Needed

For each student group:

Teaching and Learning Focus

In this investigation, your students will begin to develop their concept of clouds based upon three basic observations:

• Warm air can contain more water vapor than cold air.
• When air loses heat, some of the water in the air turns to liquid.
• As air loses heat, droplets of water collect and become visible on solid surfaces.

Materials Needed

For the class:

• Foam bucket of ice cubes and water

For each student group:

Introduction

Credit: Bob Williams, Courtesy National Oceanic and
Atmospheric Administration

Reflecting on Air

1. Immediately following the investigations above, ask your students to review what they have done and what they have learned.
2. Begin with the wind speed investigation. What observations helped them to gauge the speed of the wind? How could they tell the differences between different wind strengths? What devices could be used to measure wind speed?

Teaching and Learning Focus

Understanding that air comes from different places at different times is quite difficult to appreciate. However, wind direction, like wind speed, is an important part of weather study and forecasting. In this investigation, your students will design and build their own wind vane to help make observations about wind direction.

Materials Needed

For each student group:
For wind vane shown in diagram:

Teaching and Learning Focus