Start this activity with: What do you notice? What do you wonder? How many inches of snow produced that pile? How much snow in volume is on top of the car? How much could that snow weigh? Students try to approximate the…
How much snow is that?
Tag: weather
Wind chill
Students use the National Weather System chart to gauge wind chill, examine the patterns that correlate increasing wind and/or decreasing temperatures, use wind chill numbers to estimate possible wind and temperature factors, and generally become familiar with this sort of interpolation and calculation.
Extreme weather 2020
Use the open number line and our lists of temperature extremes to make signed number operations and absolute value sensible. Students compare record high and low temps (integers) and use absolute value in order to always find the positive difference. Subtraction of negatives becomes obvious in this lesson.
Hurricanes 2019
The official Atlantic hurricane season started on June 1 and doesn’t end until November 30th. Now Hurricane Dorian is approaching the East Coast. Encourage your students to join the conversation, knowledgeably, by using our activity. Students read about hurricane classfications and calculate…
Tornadoes 2019
Tornadoes have devastated the Midwest, U.S. in the last few days. Alabama, Texas, Louisiana, Oklahoma, Ohio, Missouri, Iowa, Nebraska and Mississippi have been brutally hit with these powerful events. Involve your students in a better understanding of the ranking and…
Wind chill
When the weather person talks about wind chill did you ever wonder how they calculate that number? In this activity students use the National Weather System chart to gauge wind chill, examine the patterns that correlate increasing wind and/or decreasing…
How much did the temperature change in Boston?
It’s been a crazy winter of extremes through much of the United States. Here’s an article, from the February 17, 2016 Boston Globe Newspaper by Matt Rochereau, with the degree swing whited out. Have your students determine the temperature increase…
Tornadoes
Tornadoes have devastated the Great Plains of the U.S. in the last few days. Oklahoma, Texas, Nebraska, Arkansas and Kansas have been brutally hit with these powerful events. Involve your students in a better understanding of the ranking and severity of…
Snow Days
Here are some pictures from a recent snowfall at my house. How Much Snow Did I Get? Have students make an estimate. Ask them for a guess that is probably a little too low and one that is probably too…
Storm cleanup
This activity could be used as an introduction to trig ratios. Students figure out the approximate length of the huge branch that I have to fell for safety and firewood. After approximating the branch’s length, they calculate how many logs…
It sure is cold out … or is it?
Students ponder the relationship between place latitudes and average January temperatures while they try to discover a correlation. Is this a linear or near linear relationship? … averaging, missing data for averaging, line of best fit, Google Earth, world locations,…
Throwing up again
Anchorage, Alaska has received more than 100 inches of snow this winter. The height of the tunnel to people’s homes is getting higher and higher. When they shovel an area, they have to throw the snow practically straight up from…
Geometry of Flooding
In 2010, March was so rainy that flooding was the topic of every newscast and many, many conversations. The picture shows how students went home from school in Wayland Mass. on March 31st – on a Duckboat. This two page investigation asks…