Mission I

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  Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to discover if there is a relationship between temperature and barometoric pressure. The information provided on this page is all you need to figure this out. Good luck.

Gadgets

  • To help you along your way, we've gathered some TOP-SECRET intelligence.
  • Get the form: [web] [pdf]
  • You will be gathering data for a period of 7 days. Go to www.weather.com and find the weather for your area. Use this information to fill out the provided form.
  • Before gathering data, form a hypothesis.

Debriefing

  • Make a line chart of the information you found.
  • Is there a relationship? Refer to your data and the graph as you make your claims.

Mission Report

Your individual written report should include the following:

1. Focus question

Is there a relationship between temperature and pressure?

2. Your initial hypothesis

What is the rationale for this hypothesis? A hypothesis is not a guess. It is based on observations of natural phenomena. So provide some explanations for your hypothesis. Do not worry about being right or wrong. An hypothesis can turn out to be wrong.  

3. Data Collection

Type the data you collected into an Excel sheet.

4. Procedure

Give detailed description of how and when you collected the data.

5. Data Analysis

Make a linechart to help you see any relationships between temperature and pressure.

7. What relationships do you see between the temperature and pressure based on your data? Refer to your data and the graph as you make your claims.

6. Discussion

    1. Define temperature and barometric pressure
    2. How are they related?
    3. What is the importance of this relationship.
    4. Based on this information, what predictions can you make about the temperature and barometric pressure for tomorrow.

Mission II

After you complete Mission I, you will have a good understanding of the relationship between temperature and barometric pressure.

Using this knowledge, you may extend your understanding with any of the following excercises.

Objective A

  • Design your own experiment to analyze and explain the weather of two different areas.
  • These areas must be from different hemispheres. For example, compare South Africa and Alaska.

Objective B

  • Compare two cities again, only this time choose cities from different zip codes.