SCHOOL: Voyager Elementary

GRADE LEVEL: 2nd

PROGRAM: Weather Wise

INSTRUCTOR: Heather Fisher

Scientist Heather’s Experience:

I got to spend this cloudy, drizzly Thursday learning all about weather with the second graders at Voyager elementary! We were amazed to see how the “lightning bolts” in our plasma ball were attracted to everyone’s fingers, just like lightening is attracted to the ground, and followed our fingers when we moved them. We also got to look at a hailstorm in a jar and watch how bubbles pushed our model hail (pasta) up and down just like an updraft would in a real hail storm. Unfortunately our pasta hail did not grow layers and break any records, otherwise we all could have had pasta for lunch! Then it got pretty stormy in the classrooms, as we measured rainfall with rain gauges, wind speed with anemometers, and even made some tornadoes and hurricanes! Students were excited to continue monitoring the wind and rain with their very own weather stations at home! Finally, as our grand finale, I got to use air pressure and wind to blast some hats off of the students’ heads with our cloud blaster! I think most students agreed that was their favorite part of the program!

I was blown away by how well everyone did with all of our weather experiments!