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Student Scientists Take Haze Projects to Science Fairs
Projects Build Confidence - and Win!
by Dr. David Brooks and Carolyn Staudt
easuring atmospheric properties such as haze is science on the border between what our own senses observe and what must be measured with instruments. We can see when air is polluted and hazy, but we need instruments to provide a quantitative understanding.
Haze-SPAN5, an informal collaboration of students as well as amateur and professional scientists, provides information to students on how to mesaure haze and how to submit the data they collect to a web site (@CONCORD, Spring 19976). Any interested student can log on and become a student scientist.
Vanessa Carr, a high school freshman in Lexington, Massachusetts, won first prize at her school science fair, placed 8th at the regional level, and has advanced to state competition at MIT for work she did with haze. "I learned how to work through the problems that the project entailed and how to best use and interpret the data," she explained. "It built my confidence as a scientist because I was able to make conclusions in an independent experiment."
Meantime, in the Mojave Desert, Casey Gorish, a 7th grader, noticed that northerly winds blew in white dust that clouded the sky. "I thought that the VHS-1 (sun photometer) would help me measure the haze and maybe tie it to Owens Lake by observing the winds," he explained. Casey placed at his county science fair with a haze project, and plans to post his data to the haze web site.
In Roanoke, Virginia, Brent Jones plans to submit an expanded version of his 8th grade haze project to a science fair next year. "I am still fascinated by the project," he said. "I intend to take readings throughout the summer to include hazy periods when we experience thermal inversions."
Competitors beware.
Carolyn Staudt7 is curriculum developer at the Concord Consortium. Dr. David Brooks, an atmospheric physicist from Drexel University, has been a Haze-SPAN online expert and is Principal Investigator for a GLOBE8 project on haze. If you want to get involved with haze research, visit the Haze-SPAN web site listed below.
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