BACKGROUND:
Temperature helps explain changing weather on a rotating Earth. This is just an introduction to collect data and plot the information to see if temperature causes weather changes.
Students will learn that the weather we experience is due to many factors. Weather depends partly on how close we are to land, water, and mountains, but it also depends on how the Earth rotates through space. Water from the oceans interacts with the atmosphere in a way that influences our weather as well. Movement of the atmosphere throughout the world helps explain weather patterns that we see.
Weather changes all the time. Weather is created in the atmosphere that envelops the Earth. Weather changes so much because the Earth is constantly spinning. Lands and water bodies heat up differently and that difference causes constant atmospheric change. Also note that "seasons" are not the same as weather. Seasons have to do with the angle of the solar radiation we receive caused by the tilt of the Earth's axis.
The focus of this long-term experiment is for students to act as scientists by collecting temperature and other weather data and plotting a class graph with the results. They will see how the class graph is useful for observing changes over time. This project will prepare students for the 1st grade project, which focuses on light and seasons.