HURRICANES
LESSON 7
CREATE YOUR OWN HURRICANE
In this lesson, you will take on the role of meteorologist and create your own hurricane!
For the first task, you will add to the information you have collected throughout the unit by interacting with three hurricane simulations. As you explore each simulation, you will evaluate the content and take notes that will help you create your hurricane and support it with factual information. In the second task, you will organize your notes using an interactive timeline and use your divergent thinking skills to write a newspaper/magazine article about your hurricane.
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Task 1: Interact & Annotate
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Task 2: Create and Write an Article About Your Hurricane
The Science Behind Making A Hurricane In A Bottle
Twirling and swirling the bottle creates a vortex as the water moves down through the hole in the washer. What you see is basically a Hurricane in a plastic bottle. When the vortex is generated, air from the bottom bottle can more easily move to the top bottle and the water comes out quicker. Try looking in the center of the bottle as you do the experiment and you will see the hole in the middle also known as "the eye of the hurricane". It takes more time for the water to move down when you let the bottle sit without making a vortex because the water and air must take turns moving through the hole in a burping effect.
The Science of Hurricanes
A hurricane is a violent storm that starts in tropical waters. In the middle of the swirling winds of the hurricane there is a calm "eye". Centrifugal force plays a large role in hurricanes. Centrifugal force pulls an object outward when its moving in a circle. Take a yo yo and whirl it around your head. The yo yo seems to pull away from your hand holding the string. The faster you whirl it the stronger the pull.
Like the yo yo, the winds of a hurricane tend to pull away from the center as their speed
increases. When the winds move fast enough, a hole develops in the center. This is the mark of
a full fledged hurricane. The eye of the hurricane is a cloudless hole about 10 miles wide, within which all is calm and peaceful. But outside surrounding the eye howling winds swirl at speeds up to 200 mph. Hurricane winds can cover an area up to 60 miles. They may rage for a week or more. They can travel tens of thousands of miles over sea and land.
Task 1: Interact & Annotate
Click on each of the simulations below. Use your evaluative thinking skills to identify key facts that will help you create your hurricane and support it with factual information. You may take notes online, in your journal, or with an organizer.
What does it take to create the perfect storm? Click on the Create-A-Cane link below to create your own hurricane.
If you can create it, can you aim it? Click on the Aim-a-Hurricane link below to channel your killer storm.
Task 2: Create & Write an Article
As a meteorologist, you have discovered a tropical storm that has become a hurricane.
You will organize your notes using an interactive timeline and activate your divergent thinking skills to write a newspaper/magazine article about your hurricane.
We will use an interactive timeline tool called HSTRY to complete this activity:
Using Sutori
1. Click here for written directions to create your Sutori account and join a class
2. Click on your Target Class
3. Scroll down to Teacher Timelines and click on Create Your Own Hurricane. This is a shared template that you will use to complete Task 2.
4. In the upper right corner, click on the blue box with the 3 dots ... then select Copy the timeline. This makes it your personal copy.
5. Edit the timeline, by first adding your name to the title. Then follow the prompts to add information about YOUR UNIQUE HURRICANE. This will be based on factual information you found when researching in Task 1. You must use a unique name for your hurricane. Your edits will save automatically.
11. When you complete your task, click Submit. You will then see a dialogue box that says Submit to My Classes. Click on your Target class, the button containing your class name will turn blue, and the plus sign will turn to a minus sign.
Need More Help? Click here to access the Sutori Help page
Want to extend your learning? Make a newspaper clipping with your own headline and story. Click on this link to Fodey to format your newspaper article. Copy in a paragraph or two, and Fodey will download it into a newspaper .jpg file. You can even upload your .jpg to your HSTRY timeline!
