1. Teacher Name: Susan Hurstcalderone

2. Your E-mail address: calderone@sysnet.net --home

3. School Name: Blessed Sacrament School

4. City or Town: Washington, DC

6. Country: USA

7. Class Name (only needed if you are submitting other forms for other classes - i.e. 3rd period Science): 8CD

8. Grade Level Choose one: Middle (Grades 6-8)

9. Number of students who worked on the plan: 26

Weather Experiment Proposal

10) We would like to gather information and compare items such as: average rainfall, average temperatures (Fahrenheit and Celsius), humidity in each season, how often there are catastrophic occurrences such as hurricanes, tornadoes, earthquakes, tidal waves, floods, droughts, etc, wind patterns, and if the climates are conducive to growth of plant life and vegetation. We plan to gather this information in the month of November when our Science class begins working on our experiments. We will be testing the temperature outside of our school in Washington, DC everyday for approximately two weeks before school, during recess, and after school. During these times we will record temperature, wind speed, wind direction, rainfall, air pressure, etc. After averaging the weather of the two weeks before we will estimate the temperatures for the next two weeks. A weather station, thermometer, psychrometer, and barometer are all going to be used in our experiments. The weather station uses four different instruments to provide five different types of information about the weather. The weather station includes a thermometer for measuring temperature, wind direction and speed indicator to determine wind direction and speed, rain gauge to find amount of rainfall, and a psychrometer to measure humidity. A maximum and minimum indoor/outdoor thermometer will be used as well as the thermometer on the weather station because our team might have to take more than one temperature at a time. A psychrometer measures the humidity of the area. Last but not least we are going to be using a dial barometer which will provide our team with information on the atmospheric pressure. We will use these instruments to collect data and use the data to understand and compare the weather in our area and also compare it to weather in Mars and other parts of the country or world.

11)All instruments that are going to be used in this experiment will be bought. We know that all of the instruments we need to complete this weather project will be under a hundred dollars because our team researched catalogs for low priced and dependable tools. The weather station and the psychrometer were both found in "Carolina Science and Math Catalog 67" (p. 730). A dial barometer and a maximum minimum indoor/outdoor thermometer were found in the "Nasco Science" (p. 271). The prices were listed in these books. We were able to add prices of the needed equipment; the final sum was $96.50. If we were to build these instruments , we would need to test their accuracy . We would perform several trials taking each of the measurements several times and then averaging them out to determine product of the rainfall, temperature, humidity, etc. If these estimates are correct we will know that are experiments were accurate and our equipment useful. In conclusion, we feel the choices we have made for our proposal are good and will be valuable in our class study. They will reveal interesting information which will help us understand more about weather here on earth and on Mars.