Work by yourself to answer the following questions. Record your answers in your technology notebook.
What examples have you seen in this chapter about the use of technology for studying the weather? List two or three examples of technologies that were presented and explain why they helped solve a problem.
In this chapter, you have examined several types of weather events. For most of them, you can see patterns.
- In your own words, define what is meant by a weather pattern.
- How does understanding patterns help us?
- Are there reasons why people should not rely on weather patterns?
Answers to Reflect and Connect
Allow students time to answer these questions. Once they have had time to complete their responses, you may want to hold a class discussion on some or all of them. Throughout this chapter, the ideas of patterns in weather events and of using technology to learn about weather patterns have recurred. The following questions should help students summarize their ideas about these two concepts. If students have worked on their posters with a partner or in teams, you may want to emphasize these questions for your assessment.
What examples have you seen in this chapter about the use of technology for studying the weather? List two or three examples of technologies that were presented and explain why they helped solve a problem.
In this chapter, you have examined several types of weather events. For most of them, you can see patterns.
In your own words, define what is meant by a weather pattern.
How does understanding patterns help us?
Are there reasons why people should not rely on weather patterns?
A weather pattern can be defined as a sequence of events that commonly occur preceding a specific type of weather event. Scientists rely on patterns to help them gauge the likelihood of a specific type of event occurring in the future. For example, by knowing that ocean waters need to be warm and that the area must have thunderstorms before a hurricane can form, scientists will know to look for these conditions when predicting future hurricanes. Although weather patterns can be very informative, they cannot provide all the information that people might want and that would prepare them for a natural event. For example, scientists may know that the atmospheric conditions make it likely that a tornado will form, but they cannot determine exactly how large the tornado will be, its exact path, how long it will remain a tornado, or if it will actually touch down.
There have been many examples of the use of technology in this chapter. In the Explore activity, students used various types of equipment to model natural events. For example, they used psychrometers to measure the difference between wet- and dry-bulb temperatures. This represents a technology that helps scientists study conditions in the atmosphere. In the Explain activity, students studied different types of natural events. In each case, they viewed animations or satellite images that represented the use of technology to study natural events and record information.