The low pressure system that rotated for days over the Midwest slowly moved east covering New Jersey in clouds, cool temperatures, and intermittent rain. Whenever the sun broke through the low gray clouds, classes went outside to practice using the infrared thermometers, hand-held weather stations, temperature probes, cloud charts, and solar meters. Throughout the day classes kept checking satellite images of the low pressure system with the hopes that the high pressure behind it would bring a clear sunny day tomorrow.
(click on image to enlarge)
Wednesday, October, 5, 2011, the weather broke in the students' favor and the data collection project was on! Ms. Salmon's and Mrs. Chen's grade 8 science classes sampled 12 stations around the school campus collecting infrared surface temperatures, air temperatures at 1-meter above the surface, relative humidity, wind speed, and solar radiation data. Each station included an area of soil covered by vegetation, a portion of the blacktop parking lot, concrete sidewalk, and the side of the school building. Data was collected between 8:20 AM and 9:00 AM, between 9:20 AM and 10:00 AM, between 11:40 AM and 12:15 PM, and between 2:00 PM and 2:45 PM. Mr. Lee's classes repeated the sampling Friday, October 7, 2011.Students are using iPads to access a Google Docs form to generate a spreadsheet of all the collected data. The data will be used to create a temperature layer that will overlay the school campus base map giving students a graphic representation of temperatures around the school over time.
estimating cloud cover, measuring wind speed and relative humidity, measuring temperature 1 meter above the surface, measuring surface temperature, and measuring solar radiation in Watts per square meter
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