Weather Unit

Experiments

To promote a hands-on learning environment in my

student teaching placement, the students and I
participated in various hands on weather experiments
to get real life representations of the atmosphere and
the world around us. In this experiment, the students
and discussed how cumulonimbus clouds cannot hold
precipitation. To show a model of this, the students and
I filled a mason jar of water and topped it off with
shaving cream. Once we completed this, we used blue
food coloring to represent precipitation falling from the
cumulonimbus cloud (the saving cream). In the weather
unit, we learned how cumulonimbus clouds predict
severe thunderstorms and heavy rain. I felt that this
experiment did a great job of representing this and the
world around us as the students were engaged in active
learning.

To continue to promote a hands-on learning environment throughout the weather

unit that I created, the students and I made a
demonstration of a cloud in a jar. The materials needed
to complete this experiment include a mason jar,
hairspray, hot water, a lid and ice. Prior to the lesson,
with safety measures taken, I heated the water in the
glass jar to prepare for the lesson. During this time, the
students were given a prediction science sheet to
predict what would happen during the experiment.
Questions asked were those such as, “Make a prediction
as to what you think will happen once the hairspray is
sprayed into the jar of hot water, will it create a cloud
or not?”. Once the science lesson was started, I called
the students back to the experiment table where the
experiment was conducted. The students and I
discussed their predictions and conducted the
experiment. We poured the hot water into the glass jar
and placed two ice cubes on top of the mason jar lid
and sealed it. This sat for about two minutes. We then
lifted the lid and sprayed hairspray into the jar and
watched a cloud form! The hairspray, hot water, and cool air from the ice cubes worked
together to create the cloud in a jar!