Weather Fronts: Understanding the Movement of Air

The difference between sea breeze and land breeze Lesson Plan providing an experiment which helps explain the different between sea breeze and land breeze By: Craig O’Connell and Jack Hord

A. State Standards Addressed a. Standard 6.1: The student will demonstrate an understanding of technological design and scientific inquiry, including process skills, mathematical thinking, controlled investigative design and analysis, and problem solving. i. Indicator 6-1.1: Use appropriate tools and instruments (including a spring scale, beam balance, barometer, and sling psychrometer) safely and accurately when conducting a controlled scientific investigation ii. Indicator 6-1.4: Use a technological design process to plan and produce a solution to a problem or a product (including identifying a problem, designing a solution or a product, implementing a design, and evaluating the solution or the product). iii. Indicator 6-1.5: Use appropriate safety procedures when conducting investigations b. Standard 6.4: The student will demonstrate an understanding of the relationship between Earth’s atmospheric properties and processes and its weather and climate. (Earth Science) i. Indicator 6-4.4: Summarize the relationship of the movement of air masses, high and low pressure systems, and frontal boundaries to storms (including thunderstorms, hurricanes, and tornadoes) and other weather conditions. ii. Indicator 6-4.8: Explain how convection affects weather patterns and climate

B. Objectives a. Students will learn characteristics about warm air and cold air b. Students will learn about the movement of air of different temperatures. c. Students will conduct an experiment demonstrating how the earth heats up throughout a 24 hour cycle d. Students will use mathematical techniques to create a graph so they can visualize the daily trends in the heating of the earth

C. Lesson Plan a. Engage. The lesson will begin with a quick PowerPoint presentation. The PowerPoint presentation will introduce the students to the characteristics of cold air and warm air, the movement of cold and warm air, and how the heating of the earth leads to land breezes and sea breezes. A quick video will be shown to demonstrate these types of breezes to reinforce the concept to the students. The video can be found at: http://www.classzone.com/books/earth_science/terc/content/visualizations /es1903/es1903page01.cfm?chapter_no=visualization. b. Explore. After the video, an experiment pertaining to the heating of the Earth’s surfaces will be demonstrated. It is essential for students to understand the difference between the heating of land versus water and how this translates to air movement. To demonstrate this concept the students will conduct the following experiment (Please see Sea Breeze and Land Breeze Lesson Plan Experiment). As students progress through the experiment, they will be recording a step by step methodology, a results section, and a conclusion section to help each student understand the process that scientists go through to conduct and complete an experiment. Steps of experiment: i. Instructor will have students pair off into two person groups ii. Prior to the experiment, students will be asked to hypothesize about the heating of Earth’s surfaces. Does land or water heat up faster and why? iii. After each group has made a hypothesis, the instructor will place the materials needed for the experiment on the lab tables. Students should be following closely by taking notes within their lab notebook. iv. Next, the instructor should guide the students through the experiment. v. Students will then record their data on the laboratory sheet (Please see Sea Breeze and Land Breeze Lesson Plan Experiment Data Sheet) vi. Instructor will assist students with graphing the data vii. Instructor will guide students to reaching conclusions by using their data obtained from the experiment c. Explain and Elaborate. This experiment requires the students to take a big leap because they must use the data obtained from the experiment and the information given in the beginning of the lecture to understand why sea breezes and land breezes occur. What students must gain in terms of the experiment is that the land heats and cools much faster than the water. So during the day (while heat lamp is on), the land will heat up faster than the water. The warm air above the land rises, causing the cooler above the ocean to take its place. As the warm air increases in altitude, it slowly cools and falls back down. This is a land breeze (to fully understand this, students must remember that cold air is denser than warm air, warm air rises, and an increase in altitude will decrease the temperature of the air). Also, students will take measurements with the heat lamp off (this represents nighttime). Students will notice that once again, the land changes temperature the fastest and cools much faster than the water. This means that the warmer air above the water will rise, and the cooler air above the land will takes its place. As the air above the water rises, it cools and falls back down. This process is called the sea breeze.

d. Evaluate. This lab will be graded by a (1) worksheet asking students to demonstrate/draw a land breeze and a sea breeze and a (2) test.

Post Lesson Notes from Teacher: 1. This was a very exciting exercise for the students and took an entire 100 minute class period.