Today’s lesson started with a concept that even older students have difficulty with – the difference between weather and climate. Are they actually different? We found out in class that there is in fact a very important difference between weather and climate.
Weather is the state of our atmosphere on a day to day basis, while climate is what our atmosphere is like on average over a longer period of time. Students explored the concept of weather and where it occurs in the atmosphere, and about how the earth’s rotation and other factors influence weather. Density was also a hot topic, and students determined that warm air was less dense than cold air because of how the molecules behave in different temperatures.
Students got the chance to make their own thermometers, model a thunderstorm, and weigh air! The most surprising thing that students learned today was that air exerts a pressure on every one of us. In fact, every square inch of our body has over 14 pounds of pressure weighing down on us!