An introductory course in getting to know our planet better through the eyes of a scientist. Students get to build a homemade weather station, complete with cloud tracker and hair hygrometer for measuring the Earth’s atmosphere. Students also learn about convention currents, liquid crystals, air pressure, and how sunlight, water, and wind can be used as sources of energy.

Step 1. Click Here to download your copy of the Ultimate Science Curriculum Earth Science 1 Student Guidebook. To download the Parent/Teacher Guidebook, Click Here.

Step 2. Watch the videos that go with it below.

[am4show have=’p116;’ guest_error=’Guest error message’ user_error=’User error message’ ]

Introduction to Creating a Homemade Weather Station

Note: If you’re a teacher, set out different weather instruments as samples for students to move from station to station. If you’re a parent or student, skip this lesson and come back to it after you’ve made your various weather instruments.

Overview: Keeping track of the weather is important for many reasons! What was the weather like today? Do you need a coat or a swimsuit? Will your flowers freeze tonight? We’ll learn how scientists use different instruments while making some for ourselves.

What to Learn: These experiments help us learn how weather can be observed, measured, and even predicted.

Materials

Weather instrument samples
Pencil
Data worksheet

Lesson #1: Anemometer

Overview: Today you’ll make your very own wind speed indicator, also known as an anemometer.

What to Learn: This experiment helps us learn how to measure and observe important aspects of our planet’s weather patterns.

Materials

Four lightweight cups
Two sticks or popsicle sticks
Tape or hot glue
Tack or pin
Pencil with eraser on top
Block of foam (optional)

Lesson #2: Barometer

Overview: A barometer is a very useful tool for scientists to use when they attempt to predict the weather. We’ll make one today and learn more about the importance of measuring the earth’s atmospheric pressure.

What to Learn: This lab helps us understand different ways to measure the earth’s weather.

Materials

Straw or stick
Water glass or clean jar
Index card
Tape
Scissors
Balloon

Lesson #3: Hygrometer

Overview: Welcome! Today we’ll learn about the water vapor in the air and how scientists measure it. This is called humidity. Together, we’ll make an instrument that measures the changes in the air’s humidity using some of our own hair!

What to Learn: Today you’ll learn more about an important attribute of the weather that scientist study: humidity. You’ll see how they can track the changes in the atmosphere over time, and you’ll do this for yourself in today’s experiment when you construct your own!

Materials (per lab group)

Index card
Cardboard
Tack
Tape
Weight (Coin is preferable, such as a dime or quarter)
Scissors
Ruler
Single hair

Lesson #4: Thermometer

Overview Thermometers are useful ways of measuring how much energy something has. Since our fingers detect heat flow, not temperature (more on this later), we need a scientific instrument to help us determine the temperature of objects.

Suggested Time 30-45 minutes

Objectives Temperature is a way of talking about, measuring, and comparing the thermal energy of objects. There are three different kinds of scales to measure temperature.

Materials (per lab group)

Thermometer (a real one, so you can calibrate yours with it)
Marker
Paper
Water
Rubbing alcohol
Clear plastic container, like a water bottle
Straw
Clay
Food coloring
Drill with adult help

Lesson #5: Rain Gauge

Overview: We’re making a simple but effective means to measure rainfall and continue our quest to collect all kinds of data on the weather.

What to Learn: This lesson helps us understand how weather changes daily, but how specifically precipitation may be very predictable during certain seasons.

Materials

Scissors
Rainy Day
Funnel
Tape
Two water bottles

Lesson #6: Cloud Tracker

Overview: If you look up in the sky you may notice a few things. If it is a clear day, you won’t see any clouds. But you may look up and see some beautiful formations overhead. Today you’ll make an instrument that can measure the amount of clouds overhead in a given time so you don’t crook your neck looking up all day!

What to Learn: This lesson gets us thinking about how we observe and measure the weather. The scientists who do this sort of thing are called meteorologists. For this unit, you’ll become a meteorologist yourself!

Materials

Sun print paperor other paper sensitive to light
Film canister or soup can
Drill with drill bit
Scissors
Sunlight

Lesson #7: Sensing Temperature

Overview: Today you’ll use your fingers to show how scientists measure one of the most important pieces of data to keep track of when it comes to weather—the temperature!

What to Learn: You’ll learn why meteorologists care about the temperature, and how we record this data.

Materials

3 glasses
1 Celsius/Fahrenheit thermometer
1 clock with second hand
Hot water
Cold water
Ice cubes (optional)
Room-temperature water

Lesson #8: Soaking Up Rays

Overview: If you’ve ever been outside on a sunny day, you may notice that your clothes can either help you stay warm or heat you up quite a bit! But why? Today’s experiment will help you answer this question.

What to Learn: This lab will help you understand how the sun interacts with the earth in the form of radiation

Materials

White piece of paper
Black piece of paper
Sunlight
Ice cubes (use small pieces that will melt in a few minutes on the sidewalk)

Lesson #9: Liquid Crystals

Overview: This lab uses liquid crystal thermal sheets to record temperatures so that we can “see” radiation at work.

What to Learn: You’ll learn about the ways that the sun affects our Earth and its air, water, and land. We’ll use the liquid crystals in our special sheets in lab today to see this happen, and discover why.

Materials

Thermal paper (liquid crystal sheets)
Incandescent bulb or sunlight
Silver highlighter or aluminum foil
Hands

Lesson #10: How Much Energy Does the Sun Produce?

Overview: Today you’ll harness the power of the sun in the palm of your hand. Well, not exactly. But today you’ll create an experiment to measure just what kind of energy we’re dealing with and depend on for daily life.

What to Learn: This experiment should demonstrate how influential the sun is on our earth, from its natural atmosphere dynamics to its energy usage and history.

Materials

Disposable pie tin
Paint brush
Measuring cups
Stopwatch
Newspaper
Black paint or spray (flat, not glossy)
Water

Lesson #11: Can Wind be Used as a Source of Energy?

Overview: Today you get construct a own windmill and use it to collect objects under its own power. In the process you’ll learn important concepts about energy and the growing importance of renewable resources like wind power.

What to Learn: Pay attention to how the sun allows wind to form, and the importance of wind in our future’s energy needs and consumption.

Materials

Pinwheel (can be purchased or made from construction paper)
Paper clips
Tape
Small shoe box (children’s size)
Electric fan
Lightweight string (about 4 feet long)
Plastic straw (longer than the width of the shoe box)
Hole punch

Lesson #12: Can Water be Used to Store Energy?

Overview: Our sun can be used for all kinds of things. In our world that is suffering from an energy crisis, we need to be more proactive to address these needs. Did you know that large bodies of water are used to store heat? Find out how today!

What to Learn: This lab will allow us to see how water interacts with the heat energy of the sun. Remember the key terms we’ve learned so far: conduction, convection, etc. What type of heat transfer do we observe here?

Materials

Measuring cups
Hot water
Watch or clock
Sink
Refrigerator (with freezer compartment)
Thermometer
Paper cups

Lesson #13: Water Purification

Overview Today it’s all about swamp muck science! Can you take a batch of yucky, mucky ooze and transform it into clean water? Do you think you can turn your dad’s coffee back into clear water? You bet!

What to Learn You will see that you can use a whole bunch of different filtering tricks to separate out what you want from what you don’t want.

Materials

“swamp muck” (water, coffee, and coffee grounds)
sand (clean sand, from the hardware store)
alum (found in the grocery or drug store) (MSDS)
lime (found in gardening store) (MSDS)
clear water
carbon (found in a fish store—used to clean tanks) (MSDS)
cheese cloth
3 clear containers, such as jars
Erlenmeyer flask or other container
funnel
medicine dropper or syringe dropper
2 cotton balls
measuring spoons (1/4 and 1/2 )
paper towels
disposable light stick (optional)

Lesson #14: Desalination

This is a BONUS LAB that you can do as a demonstration to your students, or if you already have a chemistry set you can pull it out and use the glassware to set up your own desalination plant.

Overview: Put on your goggles and rubber gloves: we’re doing some serious chemical handling today. The question today is: how do you separate salt from salt water? Let’s find out!

What to Learn: This experiment lets us deal with one of the most common substances on the earth’s surface: salt. In fact, we’re seeing how to handle the majority of the salt around us, since the oceans cover almost 75% of the Earth’s surface! That’s a lot of salt water.

Materials

Goggles
Gloves
Jar or glass
2 90^o glass tubes
Chemistry stand
Rubber tubing
Test tube clamp
Erlenmeyer flask
One-hole rubber stopper
Wire screen
Alcohol burner
Lighter
Test tube
Water
Saltwater
Heating rod

Lesson #15: Instant Ice

Overview: Did you know that in some clouds there is water that has been cooled below the level of freezing, and yet it doesn’t turn into ice? How can this happen? We’ll do a little experiment today to find out.

What to Learn: This experiment helps us understand some of the important phenomena present in our earth’s weather, as well as the interaction of water with these occurrences.

Materials

Glass
Bowl
Ice
Salt
Sodium acetate
Disposable pie tin
Rubber gloves
Scissors
Water

Lesson #16: Making Clouds

Overview: Did you ever think you could make it rain indoors? Why or why not? Today you’ll be able to wow your friends and family as you create weather without ever leaving your classroom!

What to Learn: Water is an important part of our Earth and daily lives. This lab will show you how water moves through the air as it condenses and forms clouds from vapor, which then continues to cycle through the water cycle as precipitation and other forms.

Materials

Glass of hot water
Glass of ice water
Towel
Adult help

Optional materials for Part 2:

2 L soda bottle with cap
Rubbing alcohol
Bicycle pump
Car tire valve (get one at a tire repair shop)

Lesson #17: Can Fish Drown?

Overview: Turns out fish don’t “breathe” water, but use their gills to filter the oxygen out of the water. But what happens when we remove the oxygen? How does this normally happen in nature?

What to Learn: This lesson helps us understand the properties of the fresh water on our planet’s surface. What is so special about fresh water? What do we observe through this experiment in particular?

Materials

test tube clamp
test tube
lighter (with adult help)
alcohol burner or votive candle
right-angle glass tube inserted into a single-hole stopper
regular tap water

Note: If you don’t have a chemistry glassware set, simply watch the video experiment and proceed with the questions.

Lesson #18: Convection Currents

Overview: Convection is a little difficult to understand, so we’ll use a simple experiment that allows us to visualize this important concept that influences so much of our world.

What to Learn: You’ll connect what we do in lab today with the grand patterns of climate and the earth’s relationship to the sun? But how? That’s what you’ll want to focus on today.

Materials:

Pepper
A stove
Heating source
Adult help
Ice cubes
Food coloring (optional)

Lesson #19: Food Dye Currents

Overview: Today you’ll use some food coloring to turn a bottle of water into a simulator for a heat current.

What to Learn: This experiment shows you the important processes that allow life to sustain on our planet. Where does this happen, you ask? And how? That’s what we’ll dive into today as we talk about heat currents and the definition of convection.

Materials

Food coloring
Two bottles of water
Bathtub or sink
Business card or index card
Stopwatch

Lesson #20: Streaming Water

Overview: I know I am a full-fledged grown-up, but this experiment still amazes me, and I am not quite sure why. Maybe because it’s part magic, part science, and it’s got just the right mix of both to instill curiosity.

What to Learn: Higher pressure always pushes, once again! We’re going to use this idea to stop a flow of water.

Materials

Outdoor area
Bottles of water
Tack or nail to make holes in the bottle

Lesson #21: Air Takes Space

Overview: We’re going to show how increasing air pressure can displace water to show how air takes up space.

What to Learn: When air pressure increases, the volume also wants to increase. The more air you blow in a balloon, the bigger the balloon gets. This experiment will show you that air really is something, albeit invisible.

Materials

Bathtub or sink or tank
Water
Tube or straw
Clear cup or glass jar

Lesson #22: Sneaky Bottles

Overview: How much space does air take up? Is it different in certain places rather than others? Find out the answers to these important questions in today’s lesson

What to Learn: This experiment helps us focus on one particular property of the atmosphere: pressure. We’ll learn how pressure plays a role at different layers of our atmosphere.

Materials

Tack
2 Balloons
2 Water bottles

Lesson #23: Fountain Bottle

Overview: Today you’ll be working in the splash zone as we learn about high pressure.

What to Learn: Students will learn that higher pressure always pushes, even if you’re building up pressure inside a water bottle.

Materials

A straw
Plastic bottle (water or soda bottles work)
Clay
Water
Drill with drill bit about the size of your straw
Ruler
Stopwatch

Lesson #24: Ping Pong Funnel

Overview: This lab, if you understand it, will help you understand why airplanes fly without flapping their wings. This experiment, like airplane wings, generates and makes effective use of a difference in air pressure.

What to Learn: Higher pressure always pushes. The higher pressure in this experiment is the air surrounding the top of the ball. The air below the ball is at a lower pressure because it’s moving faster to get around the ball. This difference in pressure is what makes the ball stay in the funnel, and what gives airplane wings their lift.

Materials

Ping Pong ball
Funnel

Lesson #25: Diaper Wind Bag

Overview: This is one of those really neat magic tricks that seem to defy reason when you first see it, because it looks so impossible. Once you understand how air pressure differences work, then you’ll be able to mystify your friends like a pro.

What to Learn: This experiment helps us understand pressure and its relationship to the atmosphere, especially something called Bernoulli’s principle. Higher pressure always pushes, and air moving at a higher velocity has a decreased air pressure compared to the non-moving air. This means you have a pressure difference in the area of the fast-moving air.

Materials

Scissors
Diaper Genie refill, or large plastic bags.
Stopwatch
Ruler

Lesson #26: Magic Water Glass Trick

Overview: This experiment is another fine example of how higher pressure always pushes. This is one that will wow the students, and is relatively simple and easy to do anywhere.

What to Learn: This lesson will teach you the importance of pressure in our atmosphere and how it relates to objects. You’ll also learn how the earth’s atmosphere exerts a pressure on the ground, evenly experienced in all directions.

Materials

Glass
Index card
Water
Ruler

Lesson #27: Hot Air Balloon

Overview: Air behaves differently depending on the temperature it’s at. Sometimes it floats, sometimes it sinks, sometimes it speeds across the land, and other times it just hangs around doing nothing. You can see this in weather patterns, but can also take advantage of it for hot air balloons. What to Learn: This experiment helps illustrate the different properties of air, temperature, pressure, and how they interact in ways that we can see all the time around us. Materials

Duct tape, masking tape
Lightweight plastic garbage bag
Hand-held hair dryer
Cold, calm morning
Ruler
Stopwatch

Lesson #28: Soda Can Trick

Overview: Today in lab we explore the relationship between air pressure and air movement.

What to Learn: This simple experiment will help us understand the concepts behind air pressure in the earth’s atmosphere, how it is experienced by objects, and how it decreases with altitude.

Materials

2 empty soda cans
25 straws
Stopwatch
Ruler

Lesson #29: Genie in a Bottle

Overview: This is another great way to visualize why hot air balloons rise on cool mornings. Warmer air rises above cooler air, but since air is invisible to the human eye no matter what temperature it’s at, it can be hard to understand what’s going on. This experiment will help you learn about changes in density and how they are related to temperature.

What to Learn: This experiment illustrates the connection to pressure and temperature on objects in our atmosphere.

Materials

Hot Water
2 glasses (identical)
Cold Water
Red and Blue Food Dye
Index card large enough to cover the glasses
Stopwatch
Thermometer

Lesson #30: Cartesian Driver

Overview: How does a submarine work? One minute they are resting on top of the ocean, and the next they’re diving below the surface at a constant rate. Submarines can do this over and over again. This lab explores how submarines do this repeatedly by using pressure and volume.

What to Learn: The submarine has tanks that can be filled with water if it needs to dive, or air if it needs to float (though usually it’s a combination).

Materials

Large 2L soda bottle of water
Smaller water bottle
Test tube (or medicine dropper)
Ketchup packet
Ruler

Lesson #31: Squished Soda Can

Overview: When energy is added to water, the temperature (or thermal energy) of the water increases. The liquid water is turned into steam, which fills a fixed volume. When the steam is suddenly cooled, the temperature and pressure decrease, and the volume decreases, collapsing the fixed volume into a tighter space.

What to Learn: This lab shows how the pressure, volume, and temperature of an ideal gas, like air, are related.

Materials

Empty soda can
Tongs
Bowl of ice water
Room temperature water
Tablespoon measure
Stove or burner with adult help

Lesson #32: Squished Balloon

Overview: This is such a classic experiment, and can be done with a peeled hardboiled egg instead of a balloon. Students will notice how an egg (or balloon) doesn’t fit into a bottle, but using the science of ideal gas and pressure changes, it will easily pop through.

What to Learn: This lab allows us to explore differences in pressure, and how it relates to volume. We also get to look at how fire consumes oxygen to decrease pressure.

Materials

Glass bottle, like a flask or a milk bottle
Paper
Matches with adult help
Balloon (only partway blown up so it’s a little bigger than the bottle’s opening) or an egg (or both!)
Stopwatch

Want More Science Activities?

These videos are samples from my online eScience Learning program. It’s a complete science program for K-12. Plus, it’s self-guiding, so they can do it on their own.

Access over 800 more experiments! Includes our unconditional happiness money-back guarantee! Click here to learn more.

Thank You!

Thanks for the privilege as serving as your coach and guide in your science journey. May these videos bring you much excitement and curiosity in your learning adventure!

~Aurora

Supercharged Science

[/am4show]