Measuring The Weather Class Activity

This video shows classroom experiment to measure wind speed and direction using bubbles, and explains that this is as an example of flow visualisation. Ideal to support Geography Key stage 3.

Measuring the speed and direction of the wind is one of many practical ways you can investigate the weather in your surroundings. In this video, Janet Barlow, Professor of Environmental Physics in the Department of Meteorology demonstrates how you can measure the speed and direction of the wind using a bubble machine.

Fieldwork ideas after viewing this video:

• Use bubbles to see if you can estimate the wind speed by timing how long they take to travel 5m (roughly 5 large paces)
• Find a building you can walk all the way round and which doesn’t have too much vegetation around it. On a windy day, walk around the building blowing bubbles, and see how the speed and direction of the bubbles changes. You could even try and show it on a sketch map. Are there places where the bubbles get caught in turbulence, going round and round in circles?

This short video clip has been made available by the University of Reading and comes from our successful Come Rain Or Shine Open: Understanding the Weather. A free online course developed with the Royal Meteorological Society available from FutureLearn.

Visit futurelearn .com site and search ‘come rain or shine’ for the full course (free without certificates option available).

The University of Reading Recruitment and Outreach team offers a huge range of free events, programmes and activities for students to give them all the information they need about higher education and to enhance their subject knowledge and experience. Visit our website for more details.