Welcome, Teachers...

Teacher Alert! - Weather

Use a Disposable Rubber Glove Instead!
Has the rubber sheet included in your kit gotten old and somewhat brittle? You can easily replace it with a disposable rubber glove! The rubber sheet is included in the kit for use with the "Barometer in a Drum" activity. You may not need an entire replacement parts kit by the time this piece of equipment becomes old, worn-out, or torn. Disposable rubber gloves are available from most home improvement centers and fit the plastic drum for the activity well. Check with your local school custodians and you may find that disposable rubber gloves are available right at your school! These gloves may even be easier to use than the rubber sheet included in the kit, since they stretch around the opening and the fingers of the glove provide a natural "handle" for pulling and pushing to change the air pressure.

Another Use for Disposable Rubber Gloves
The teacher’s guide describes using a rubber stopper with a short length of plastic aquarium tubing attached to change the pressure inside a flask in the "Clouds in a Flask" activity. Of course, students must place the end of the tube in their mouths in order to blow on the end. To manage this activity, you need to designate one student in each group as the one to place the tube in their mouth, and remind the class not to pass the apparatus around for all to try it. Another option might be to try using a disposable rubber glove attached to the flask with rubber bands around the neck of the flask. If you can get a good seal, then you can change the pressure inside the flask by pushing down and then pulling up on the glove.

Watch for Large Glass Jars
For almost every purpose, plastic containers seem to be superior to glass ones. A quick look around the supermarket shows that they are certainly more popular. Some of the best science demonstrations will work only with glass containers, however, so watch for and hang on to large glass containers when you find them. A large, glass "pickle jar" works great for the "Clouds in a Flask" activity. When you seal the opening with a rubber sheet or disposable rubber glove you can produce clouds or fog inside quite dramatically.

Calibrate Your Barometer
Remember that you can calibrate your barometer to match local conditions. Barometers are set in the factory, but differences in elevation alter the originally setting on the barometer. Check local conditions on the news, internet, or from a local airport and then set your own barometer to match. Use the small set screw on the back of the barometer (usually accessible through a small hole in the back of the case) to adjust the needle. Tap the barometer gently after adjusting to be sure the needle has settled in to its new position. Adjust again as needed.

Higher Elevation Barometers
Some of our schools are reporting that the barometer simply cannot be set at their elevation. This may be true if your location is above five or six thousand feet. At this elevation, the air pressure decreases enough that the barometer cannot be adjusted to match reported weather conditions. If this is the case, the barometer can still be used to watch changing trends—rising and falling air pressure. If you would like, barometers are available which have been designed for higher elevation use and can be ordered from weather and science supply houses.