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Age Range: Secondary

Air Pressure and Height

phyphox pressure
barometer

We can’t see or feel atmospheric pressure but rely on barometers to tell us how the pressure is changing.

Pressure changes with altitude. Changing weather patterns can also lead to changing atmospheric pressure.

For these exercises, you will need to download the phyphox app onto your phone or, if you are working in small groups, onto one person’s phone.

You will also need a tape measure (5m) and access to an open stairwell – the higher, the better!

phyphox app

Using the following information, calculate the theoretical atmospheric pressure at the surface of the Earth:

Total mass of the atmosphere: 5 x 1018kg

Radius of the Earth: 6370km (OR surface area of Earth = 5.1 x 10 14 m2)
Gravitational field strength, g = 10 ms-2

Pressure = force/ area
Pressure = mass x g/ (4 pi r2)
Pressure = (5 x 1018 x 10)/ (5.1 x 10 14)
Pressure = 98057 Pa

Alternative units: 1hPa = 100 Pa
1 millibar (mbar) = 1 hPa

Now open the app and select pressure:

phyphox app

Now use the forward arrow to start measuring the pressure:

phyphox pressure

Record the current air pressure in your classroom in Pa __________________________________

What proportion of the theoretical atmospheric pressure you calculated above it this (express your answer as a percentage)?___________________________

Move to an open stairwell and complete the following table, using a tape measure to record the vertical distance you have ascended between each measurement you make. Make sure that you make your first measurement at floor level.

pressure table

Now draw a graph of change in atmospheric pressure (dependent variable) against height (independent variable).

graph paper

Complete the following sentence “A pressure change of 1hPa indicates an altitude change of ____m”.

Extension Questions
Many smart phones, watches etc. are equipped with pressure sensors so that they can be used to calculate altitude.

1) If you used a phone (in flight safe mode) to measure the pressure inside an aeroplane in flight, why won’t it give you an accurate indication of the height you are flying at?

2) You are on a many-day expedition to the Himalayan mountains and you are using the pressure sensor in your watch to tell you how high you are. Why would it not be safe to rely on this information?

(resources created from ideas on https://phyphox.org/)

More Climate Change in Physics Resources

Climate Change Transition Day

climate graph
Climate Change Quality Mark Content

Notes for Person Delivering the Event

These resources are designed to be used in one session with year 6 (10/ 11 year old) students. Although they will support numeracy, literacy and various other aspects of the curriculum, they are designed to prepare students for secondary school rather than support the year 6 curriculum.

There are 6 suggested activities. Although they are designed to be run sequentially, you may choose to use only some of the activities, or to supplement them with your own ideas.

You may like to ask them to summarise their learning after each activity – this could be on post it notes on a cloud, or …

It should be possible to use these activities with any class size.

Many people, including Ellie Highwood, Cristina Charlton-Perez, Helen Johnson and Laila Gohar, have contributed to these resources.

1) The difference between weather and climate

Time: 30 minutes

You will need: Weather or Climate.pptx, one printed copy of Weather or Climate.docx for each pair of students and two dice per pair of students.

a) Show the images in the PowerPoint presentation and ask the students what each image shows and whether it is ‘weather’ or ‘climate’. Some may not have a clear answer!
b) Ask the students to get into pairs and give each pair one sheet and two dice.
c) Give them 5 minutes to roll both dice and record the combined score each time they roll as a tally chart.
d) Optional: ask them to turn this tally into a bar chart on the graph paper provided.
e) Can they predict what number they would roll next, if they had the chance?
f) Talk about how the graph shows the most likely score (the climate) but also the complete range of possible scores (the weather). What scores are ‘extreme’?
g) What happens to the numbers if the ‘1’ on one of the dice is changed into a ‘7’?

2) Climate change graph

lollipop sticks

Time: 30 minutes

You will need: 120 multicoloured lollipop sticks (at least 10 sticks each of 6 colours), Climate_Change_Picture.pptx, lollipop.xls, blue tack or similar

Note: this probably works best with groups of about 6 students working on each graph, with larger groups more teacher involvement will be required to keep the whole group engaged.
a) Before the event, mark on the middle of each lollipop stick. On each stick, write the year and the temperature for one of the data points in the spreadsheet (e.g. 1970 14.47), differentiating between global and CET data. Use a different coloured lollipop for each decade – so the 60s are all one colour etc.
b) You’ll also need to print a blank graph – the document supplied will work on A3 paper.
c) Divide the students into two groups. Within each group, divide out the lollipop sticks.
d) They should then work together to stick the sticks to the graphs in the right places, using the line in the middle of the stick as the marker.
e) Whilst doing so, they can look at years that mean something to them – the year they were born, their parents were born etc.
f) When they’ve finished, ask them to complete the table on the ppt
g) What does their graph show? What surprises them? What are the similarities and differences between the graphs?
h) Optional: take the sticks back off the graph and, within their groups, line the sticks up in temperature order with the coldest on the left and the warmest on the right. What does this show?

Climate change graph

3) Climate change lucky dip

Time: 30 – 60 minutes

You will need: Lucky dip bag of things that have some link (vague or otherwise) to climate change. Each group takes an object, and then together works out what the connection is. After 10 mins groups swap
objects until all groups have seen all objects. (You could make a simple worksheet with a box for them to write their ideas for each item).
At the end – ask for feedback on each object and give them the “correct answer” – this can take a while – if you have 4 objects, this would make a 60 minute activity. I think they lose interest after 4 objects.

Example objects, depending on what you have available. Try and use objects which have both obvious and higher level ideas associated with them. Try and balance ‘doom and gloom’ with ‘opportunity and hope’ ideas.

Toy car: Emissions of greenhouse gases, also ozone and air pollution. Move talk
onto electric vehicles, nighttime charging etc.

Tree ring slice: Tree rings are an indirect way of measuring our climate etc, trees remove
carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, forestation and deforestation.

Cuddly cow: Methane – but you could also talk about the climate impact of beef etc. as
that is now much more talked about.

Butterfly brooch: Most of the kids talk about different species adapting to climate change (they do evolution in year 6) but you can also refer to chaos and internal links between different parts of the climate system

Mini trainer shoe: Some “air” trainers used to have SF6 in which is a really strong
greenhouse gas. You could also use baby shoes to represent babies and population growth. Also transportation – where were these shoes made?

Mirror: Geo-engineering and space mirrors – but can also explain albedo in this
way.

Solar powered toy: Renewable energy sources

Windmill: Renewable energy sources, changing weather patterns

Bag of rice: Methane production, plants as absorbers of CO2

Cuddly polar bear, puffin or other iconic animal threatened by climate change.

Sponge: Link to bleaching coral reefs and plankton as photosynthesisers equivalent to land plants.

Chocolate bar: Clearing of rainforests for production and threat to cocoa plants as
temperature rises.

Bottle of frozen water: Melting glaciers and ice caps; link to albedo and positive feedback;
hydrogen fuel

Piece of charred wood: Sustainable fuels; increased forest fires.

4) Weather risk game

Time: 30 minutes

You will need: money.docx printed in colour, WeatherRiskGame.pptx, 6 dice – large ones which the whole class can see work best. I got some foam ones very cheaply.

a) Before the event, mark the dice ‘p’ and 1-5. On the die marked 1, cross out or otherwise mark one side, on the die marked 2 cross out or otherwise mark two sides etc.

foam dice

b) Use the ppt to guide the activity.
c) The students will need to get into 6 groups. Give each group one colour of money and ask them to cut it up. You should keep the ‘insured’ slips.
d) Each time you play, roll the P dice first. On the basis of which side it shows, the students should decide whether to insure their businesses or not (if a 6 is shown, then there is no chance of bad weather and presumably no-one will insure). If they choose to insure, they should pay you the appropriate sum in return for an ‘Insured’ slip. Then, roll the appropriate die (so if the P die gave a 3, next roll the die labelled 3). If a crossed-out side is rolled, then anyone who was not insured should pay you the appropriate sum.
e) Collect in all the insured slips and start again.
f) Continue until either one team, or all teams except one are out, depending on time.

5) Flooding, floating gardens and raft building

Time: 2.5 hours

You will need: Laptop and projector (for PowerPoint)
Whiteboard or flipchart for recording “purchases” by teams and competition results
5 or 6 small ziplock bags containing soil or sand and representing the crops of the garden.
Large and deep plastic box for use as “lake”
Towels
Access to water
Bundles of building materials e.g. plastic straws, lolly sticks, willow sticks, elastic bands, string, corks
Tape dispenser and scissors for each team
Additional materials for teams to “purchase” e.g. small plastic bottles with lids, plastic trays, bubble wrap, bags (anything else you can think of).
Topic: Flooding and climate change, developing world, adaptation.
Skills: teamwork, raft building, communication, budgeting, testing

Based on the Flooding Gardens activity from Practical Action.

Summary:
• Short powerpoint on flooding and impact of climate change. (15 mins)
• Set up problem of agriculture in Bangladesh (5 mins)
• Design and build of floating garden rafts according to specification in the power point (see also
below) – 40 mins including one opportunity for testing design
• Public competition – 20 mins
• Final few slides on real life application – 10 mins
Plus need a bit of time to set up in advance and definitely some to pack / clear up afterwards

Raft building part:
Each team needs to build a raft that could hold a floating garden. The winner is the team that builds a raft that can hold the most weight (small bags of soil) without the top surface of the raft being inundated with water. If using the budgeting version, secondary awards for cheap designs that work (although maybe not quite as well as the expensive ones).

Students are provided with a bag containing e.g. straws, willow sticks, elastic bands, sellotape dispenser, scissors, corks, lolly sticks. These represent “free” and available materials.

Also available are plastic bottles, plastic trays, bubble wrap and anything else you can think of – but these are kept at the front and have a price attached to them. The actual value you give them is arbitrary but they are supposed to represent things that are scarce in the communities we are considering. For example, plastic bottles might represent sealed oil drums, bubble wrap might be tarpaulins etc.

(Note, all materials can and should be recovered at the end of the session – the rafts are broken down and materials reused on other occasions).

With a year 6 group, you should be able to get them to discuss and draw out their design as a team first (maybe first 10 mins of building section), then send one person to get what they need (including paying – I haven’t given them a budget as such, just kept a record of what they have “spent”, but you could give each group a fixed budget if you wanted to (and then judge your winner differently).

6) Greenhouse Effect Bulldog

Time: 30 minutes
You will need: A playground. Chalk or similar. Hats or sashes (see below).
This playground game demonstrates the way Greenhouse gases return energy to the Earth’s surface – as well as allowing the students to run off some energy!
a) With chalk or similar, mark a Sun and an Earth at opposite ends of the school playground. If possible also draw a line across the playground, a third of the way between the Earth and the Sun.
b) Choose 2 students to be greenhouse gases – if possible give them a hat or sash to identify them.

Which greenhouse gases have they heard of? One could be water and the other carbon dioxide.

They are allowed to move only along the line you have drawn. Their role is to try and touch the other students as they run past but only when they are running from the Earth towards the Sun!
c) The other students are all ‘energy’ and start off by the Sun.
d) The ‘energy’ should run to the Earth and back again, repeatedly. If the ‘greenhouse gas’ students manage to touch them, then they have to run 10 times between the greenhouse gas line and the Earth before being allowed to return to the Sun.
e) After a few minutes of doing this, stop the students and increase the numbers of ‘greenhouse gas’ students – you could add a methane, or another water.
f) Again, let them play this for a while, then stop them and ask what has changed. They should notice that there is now more ‘energy’ trapped near the Earth.
g) You could increase the amount of greenhouse gas again and let them see what happens.
h) Finish by talking about how greenhouse gases are essential to maintaining our climate, but that increasing the amount of greenhouse gas leads to heating. You may need to talk a little bit about the different forms energy can take – light, heat etc.

greenhouse bulldog

Ocean Warming and Kettles – Teachers’ Notes

Cumulus clouds over water
© Steve Jebson

Resource produced in conjunction with Sustainability Physics.

Students’ worksheet. 

Motivation:

  • The world’s oceans are heating. Their temperature is not rising as fast as that of the land or air, but they are the major store of the excess thermal energy resulting from greenhouse gas emissions
  • According to the abstract of this study https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1029/2012GL051106#support-information-section the top 700m of the oceans have warmed by 0.18°C on average between 1955 and 2010. This resource investigates how big this store of thermal energy is.

Curriculum links

  • GCSE physics heat capacity, power calculations and estimation
  • GCSE maths standard form: the order of magnitude of the numbers is more important for this question than the numerical values

This could be used as a starter exercise: Can students do the whole question at once given only the radius of the Earth, the temperature rise and the specific heat capacity of sea water?

  1. Why does the temperature of the sea rise more slowly than the temperature of the land or air?
    Water has a higher heat capacity (4kJ/kg/°C for sea water) than land (2kJ/kg/°C for rock) or air (around 1kJ/kg/°C). For the same input of thermal energy, the increase in temperature is smaller for the ocean than it is for the land.
  2. Find the area of the Earth’s oceans using the following information: the radius of the Earth is 6371km and the oceans cover about 70% of the Earth’s surface.
    A = 4πR2 = 3.57 x1014 m2 ≈ 3.6 x1014 m2
    3. Find the volume of the top 700m of the oceans. Ignore all the coastal sections of the ocean which are shallower than 700m.
    V = A*height = 2.5 x17 m3
    4. Find the mass of the top 700m of the ocean. Use the density of seawater as ρ = 1025 kg/m3
    Mass = V* ρ = 2.56 x1020 kg ≈ 2.6 x1020 kg
    5. Find the energy required to give this mass a temperature rise of 0.18°C. The specific heat capacity of sea water is 4 kJ/kg/K
    Energy = C*Mass*ΔT = 1.8 x1023 J
    6. Find the average power over the 55 year heating period
    Power = Energy/time = 1.1 x1014 W
    7. How big is that power? Find the power ‘per person’ by dividing the total power by the number of people on Earth today (8 billion people)
    1.3 x104 W
    8. A kettle has a power of 2.5kW. How many kettles would each person on the Earth have to boil to have the same total power?
    1.3 x104 W / 2.5 x103 W = 5.3 ≈ 5
    The warming of the upper ocean between 1955 and 2010 is equivalent to the energy used by every person on Earth boiling 5 kettles continuously for 55 years! This question only considers the upper ocean. The lower ocean is also warming and storing energy.

Ocean Warming and Kettles

Cumulus clouds over water
© Steve Jebson

Resource produced in conjunction with Sustainability Physics.

Teachers’ Notes

Motivation

The world’s oceans are heating. Their temperature is not rising as fast as that of the land or air, but they are the major store of the excess thermal energy resulting from greenhouse gas emissions

The top 700m of the oceans have warmed by 0.18°C on average between 1955 and 2010.

This resource investigates how big this store of thermal energy is.

  1. Why does the temperature of the sea rise more slowly than the temperature of the land or air?
  2. Find the area of the Earth’s oceans using the following information: the radius of the Earth is 6400km and the oceans cover about 70% of the Earth.
  3. Find the volume of the top 700m of the oceans. Ignore all the coastal sections of the ocean which are shallower than 700m.
  4. Find the mass of the top 700m of the ocean. Use the density of seawater as ρ = 1025 kg/m3
  5. Find the energy required to give this mass a temperature rise of 0.18°C. The specific heat capacity of sea water is 4 kJ/kg/K
  6. Find the average power over the 55 year heating period
  7. How big is that power? Find the power ‘per person’ by dividing the total power by the number of people on Earth today (8 billion people)
  8. A kettle has a power of 2.5kW. How many kettles would each person on the Earth have to boil to have the same total power?

KS3 Maths – Egypt’s Road Problem

In this resource linked to COP27 in Egypt, maths students apply pythagoras’ theorem to solving Egypt’s road building conundrum. 

Introduction/Motivation

The 2022 United Nations climate change conference (27th session of the Conference of Parties – COP27) will be held in Sharm El-Sheikh in Egypt, starting on the 7th of November.

In the introduction video screened at the end of COP26 in Glasgow, Egypt celebrates its road-building project. This resource explores efficient road designs and the climate impacts of car travel.

Resources:

PowerPoint

4 City square template

Created with support from MEI 

Section 1: Lesson Introduction

Show the Egypt introduction video from COP26 and show them the pictures of new Egyptian roads.

Road-building clip only:

Or the full Egypt introductory clip: from 09:21-12:26 in https://unfccc-cop26.streamworld.de/webcast/closing-plenary-of-the-cop-followed-by-cmp-and-c-2

Ask students what comments or questions they have on the video: What do they wonder?

They could discuss in pairs or groups before giving feedback to the class.
You could steer the discussion towards some of the following points:

  • What are the advantages and disadvantages of building new roads?
  • What do you thing about building new roads compared to the other climate mitigation and adaptation projects mentioned in the video?
  • Roads for sustainable development: connecting cities and industry
  • Will a new road reduce traffic?
  • Building roads versus building railways/airports
  • How will building new roads impact greenhouse gas emissions?
  • Should houses be demolished to make way for new roads? https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/egypts-road-building-drive-eases-jams-leaves-some-unhappy-2021-05-14/
  • How should governments decide which new roads to build? How can we reduce travel time for the most people, reduce the length of the new road or reduce the greenhouse gas emissions from people travelling on the road?

The remainder of the lesson uses maths to explore the last point.

Section 2: Scenario motivation for the Steiner problem

This could be introduced as motivation for the Steiner problem, or as a real world application once the problem has been solved (after section 3).

One of the new roads connects Beni Suef and Zaafarana. https://scoopempire.com/where-to-%EF%BB%BFegypt-launches-a-series-of-road-and-construction-projects-to-link-up-cities-far-and-wide/

Together with the important cities of Cairo and Suez, this can be simplified and framed as an example of the famous ‘Steiner Problem’: 

Egypt map

Source: Google maps

Which looks a bit like:

 

Steiner problem

Section 3: Steiner Problem using a Square


To simplify the problem, start by investigating 4 cities in a square. What is the most efficient way to connect all the cities (using the shortest distance of road)? You need to be able to visit all the cities on the road network, but you can go via other cities.

This problem is also described here: https://nrich.maths.org/14937

Students can use the sheet of squares (or squared paper) to draw as many different designs as they can think of, using curves and straight lines, or just straight lines.

Collect some ideas and ask students to calculate the total road distance required. For the square side length, you could use realistic road-distance numbers (eg 100km), simple numbers (eg 10, 1) or a symbol such as x. Students could first measure the distances using a ruler, then calculate them using Pythagoras’ theorem.

Help students to arrive at the optimal solution by considering the two designs below: Is there an intermediate design that would be even better?

Once students have arrived at the optimal solution, this video gives a good demonstration using soap bubbles: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dAyDi1aa40E

Section 4: Context Calculations

At this point you could choose to start using realistic road distances or the fact that the cities are not in a square but are closer to a rectangle (see the first extension point below).

  • What is the total distance of the optimal network? How long would it take to travel between each city whilst travelling at the Egyptian motorway speed limit of 100km/hr? (https://www.autoeurope.ie/driving-information-egypt)
  • Assume that the roads connecting Beni Suef to Cario, Cairo to Suez and Suez to Zaafarana already exist. Which one new road should be built to reduce the travel time from Beni Suef to Zaafarana? What is the reduction in travel time?
  • Cars emit around 120 gCO2/km (https://www.eea.europa.eu/data-and-maps/indicators/average-co2-emissions-from-motor-vehicles/assessment-1)
    By how much does the new road reduce the CO2 emissions of a journey from Beni Suef to Zaafarana?
  • Due to the shorter travel time, the new road might increases the number of journeys between Beni Suef and Zaafarana. How many extra journeys are needed to outweigh the decrease in emissions from the reduced distance?

Extension Ideas

  • Return to the introduction video at the end of the lesson. What do students think about building roads and climate change after completing the activity?
    • The 4 cities in Egypt are not in a perfect square, but are close to being in a rectangle. Does this change the optimal road network? This is discussed at https://thatsmaths.com/2015/01/29/the-steiner-minimal-tree/
  • Students could use google maps to look at the real travel time between the 4 cities using different routes.
  • What happens when we consider more cities?
  • Can students think of other situations where this problem could apply? (gas pipelines, rail networks, broadband cables)
  • Think about the real-world practicalities that the Steiner solution doesn’t address. Is it the best solution if most journeys are between Cairo and Suez? Should existing roads be removed in order to build the most efficient network? Which journey times would be increased by this?
Other KS3 Maths Resources from MEI and RMetS
Other Resources for COP27
Climate Change Quality Mark Content

Trees – evaporative cooling and reflection of EM radiation

Olive Trees

Calculation: Trees as Air Conditioners

Learning objectives: to apply the equations 

energy for a change of state = mass × specific latent heat

energy transferred = power × time

to a real world situation.

When water evaporates from the leaves of trees, is it called evapotranspiration. The latent heat required for this comes from the thermal store of energy in the surroundings.  This question compares the cooling power of evapotranspiration from an oak tree to air conditioning.

  1. An oak tree can lose up to 400 kg of water through evaporation from its leaves in one day (24 hours). Assuming that the energy for evaporation comes from the tree’s surroundings, calculate the average cooling power of the tree. The specific latent heat of vaporisation of water is 2700 kJ/kg.

energy for a change of state = mass × specific latent heat

400 kg * 2700 kJ/kg  

power  =  energy transferred / time

time = 24*3600

power = 10 kW

  1. An air conditioning unit  has a power of 2.5 kW. How many air conditioning units would be required to provide the same cooling power as the evapotranspiration of one oak tree?

10 kW / 2.5 kW = 4 units

Describe: Trees as Reflectors

Aim: Students should be able to describe the effects of reflection, transmission and absorption of waves at material interfaces.

This activity would work well as a think/ pair/ share activity, and could also be displayed as a poster or other presentation. 

The chlorophyll in green leaves of a tree absorbs the red and blue light in the visible Electromagnetic radiation from the Sun. The green light is reflected. 

A green umbrella would do the same. 

Both cast a shadow on the ground, implying that less visible light reaches the ground. 

The ground also reflects some of the sunlight and absorbs the rest. 

Absorbed sunlight increases the thermal store of energy. 

The greater the thermal energy stored in an object, the more infrared radiation, heat, it emits. 

Would you feel cooler walking along a road that is shaded by trees than you would if you carried a green umbrella?

Both the umbrella and the trees will reduce the amount of sunlight reaching you and warming you up. 

They will also reduce the amount of sunlight reaching the ground. However, the trees are permanent and will have been shading the ground all day, so the ground in the shadow of the trees will be cooler than the ground in the shadow of a moving umbrella. 

The heat, infrared radiation, reaching you from the ground will be lower in the shadow of the trees.

Extended ideas

These could include:

  • evaporative cooling as described above,
  • the fact that the trees will also be a barrier to convection so heat could be trapped near the ground,
  • the fact that trees will be a barrier to the wind and so air will be trapped below them. This will also reduce the conduction of heat from the ground, 
  • in the long term, trees remove carbon from the atmosphere and so reduce the greenhouse effect, 
  • trees can also reduce air pollution,
  • trees can reduce flooding by slowing the flow of water. 

Rainfall and Pressure

Kids rain gauge

Broad General Education (BGE)

Fourth Level: People, Place and the Environment

I can demonstrate an understanding of weather and climate by explaining the relationship between weather and air pressure.

  • Explains links between weather and air pressure

A data based resource looking at rainfall and pressure: Worksheet below and Teachers Notes. 

Alternative resource: Red sky at Night, Shepherd’s Delight worksheet and Teacher’s Notes – a resource looking at how our prevailing wind direction means this saying is largely true.

Name:                                                                                                                                      Date:

Investigating the Link Between Between Pressure and Rainfall

Here is some data collected by a weather station on the outskirts of Edinburgh, at the start of 2019.

pressure rainfall data

Using this data, draw a graph of rainfall against pressure.

blank graph paper

Now use this information to complete the following sentences:

The most it rained in one day was _______________mm.

It didn’t rain at all on ____________ days.

The highest pressure recorded was ______________hPa (a hPa is the same as a millibar).

The lowest pressure recorded was _______________hPa.

Does it always rain when the pressure is low? Use figures to justify your answer.

____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Does it ever rain when the pressure is high? Use figures to justify your answer.

____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Many weather apps assume that if the pressure is low, it will rain. Does your graph justify this assumption?

_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Extension:

Here are the weather maps for 4 of the days when it rained: the first 3 show when the pressure was low and the 4th shows when the pressure was high and it rained.

weather charts

Weather and Climate worksheet

two dice tally

Background Information:

Climate is the average weather over a long time period (30 years) for a particular region or place. The climate affects a number of environmental factors within the region including the type and growth of vegetation and wildlife. The climate is determined by large scale factors such as the Earth’s orbit around the Sun, the position of the continents and the composition of the atmosphere. Weather describes the short-term state of our atmosphere. This may include information about the air temperature, precipitation, air pressure and cloud cover. Our local weather changes daily due to the movement of air in our atmosphere.

Experiences and Outcomes:

I can investigate the relationship between climate and weather.

two dice tally

Difference between weather and climate

You will need:

2 dice

Tally chart for numbers 2-12 Graph paper

Method:

In pairs, throw the two dice about 100 times and record the combined score shown each time. 

Draw a bar graph of the results.

Results:

The results should show a smoothish distribution, with a score of 7 being most frequent. Ask each group to predict what their score will be if they throw the dice one more time – they can’t. However, with one more throw, the mean of all the scores will stay about the same (about 7). In the same way, the weather may be very different from day to day but the climate, the weather we ‘expect’, stays about the same.

If you don’t have access to dice, you can do this activity online at https://www.metlink.org/blog/weather-climate-extreme-weather-and-chaos-theory/ 

Extension:

Can the students design a concept cartoon to illustrate the difference between weather and climate? See https://www.stem.org.uk/system/files/elibrary-resources/legacy_files_migrated/1292WEATHER.PDF and http://www.millgatehouse.co.uk/concept-cartoons-research/ 

References/Resources: 

A YouTube video showing an owner and his dog, as an analogy for weather and climate

Beast from the East

Traffic moving on snowy road.
Traffic moving on snowy road.

Broad General Education (BGE)

Second Level: People, Place and the Environment

I can describe the physical processes of a natural disaster (extreme weather event)
and discuss its impact on people and the landscape.

  • Describes the causes of a natural disaster such as a volcano, earthquake or extreme weather event.
  • Describes the impact of the natural disaster giving at least three examples for people and one for the landscape. Impact can be positive or negative.

Suggested Lessons: The Beast from the East

Lesson Outline

PowerPoint 1 

PowerPoint 2

card sort

UK map for air masses

Lesson 1 worksheet

Lesson 2 video questions

Lesson 2 weather observations workstation cards

Scottish S4 Scheme of Work

uk map

Suggested S4 Scheme of Work

 

Lesson 1: Weather Introduction

Lesson 1.pptx

Lesson 2: Temperature

Lesson 2.pptx

Weather Unit S4_Lesson2_exercise

QuizMasters_Lesson2

Lesson 3: Rainfall

Lesson 3.pptx

Convectional and Relief Rainfall Sheet

Lesson 4: Air Masses

Lesson 4.pptx

Air mass map and cut out

Lesson 5: Weather Station Symbols

Lesson 5.pptx

Board Rush Instructions.docx

Board Rush Symbols.pdf

Weather Station Symbols Sheet

Lesson 6: Clouds

Lesson 6.pptx

Lesson 7: Pressure Systems

Lesson 7.pptx

Pop-up depression

Lesson 8: Drawing Climate Graphs

Drawing Climate Graphs.pptx

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