Event-Based Science®


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What is Event-Based Science?

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Event-Based Science meets National Science Education Standards!


Hurricane!

Event-Based Science is a new way to teach middle school science. It is an award-winning, standards-based program in which newsworthy events establish the relevance of science topics; authentic tasks create the need-to-know more about those topics; and lively interviews, photographs, Web pages, and inquiry-based science activities create a desire to know more about those topics.

Main EBS Page

weather barometric pressure clouds track precipitation wind storm

Hurricane! is an Event-Based Science module about one of the most devastating weather events that people can experience. Our story focuses on the devastation that Hurricane Andrew brought to South Florida in August, 1992. This storm destroyed 25,524 homes, damaged 101,241 more, left 250,000 people homeless and 54 dead.

The task in Hurricane! turns your class into teams of experts. Each team will publish a newspaper account of a real hurricane that is approaching one of 11 American cities that have been chosen as the teams' home cities. Each home city has a history that includes hurricane strikes and damage.

NSTA Recommends Hurricane!

Each team of 6 students has its own Editor-In-Chief, Hurricane Specialist, Meteorologist, Natural Hazards Planner, Reporter, and Environmental Scientist. As this team receives daily information on the hurricane bearing down on its coastal city, decisions must be made. Action must be taken! The public must be informed!

Teaching Suggestions From The Field


Hurricane!
has activities designed
for Special Needs Students.

Hurricane!
has two remote-sensing activities
sponsored by NASA.


Hurricane! Resources

A "pdf" file containing web sites, books, material lists, and correlations with National Science Education Standards.
Use the BACK button in your browser to return to this page.

HTML Version


If you are a teacher who is about to do the Science Activity called Hurricane Tracking, we have created a tool called Update Tracking Data. It is an MSWord file that presents tracking data for Day 8 through Day 13. Download the file and print out the three pages. Then cut out and glue the appropriate weather maps from Hurricane! Teacher Guide page 43 onto Update Tracking Data. Two maps will fit on each page. Make transparencies from these pages and use the transparencies to present additional tracking data as your students complete the activity.

Update Tracking Data Download


EBS Breaking News
Click here to use Google News to search and browse 4,500 continuously updated news sources for breaking news about hurricanes and weather.

Click here to support the Victims of the Myanmar (Burma) Disaster

Hurricane Season 2007
Is Over

2007 has lowest tropical storm activity since 1977

During hurricane season---June 1 through November 30---you can use the Event-Based Science Hurricane! page as your starting point for tracking the latest storm. Try clicking on on the word "tracking" to see what's happening now. You can also use the map below to get almost real-time wind and wave-height measurements from a data buoy near any active hurricane. This year's Hurricane began on May 9, when Andrea reached Tropical Storm  status.

Bouy data map

HELPING HURRICANE VICTIMS

One way to engage your students in the topic of hurricanes is to have them support families who were directly affected by a recent hurricane. Begin your search for ways to help with these two organizations:

The American Red Cross

Salvation Army

2007 Atlantic Hurricane Names 
Underlined
names below are linked to the tracking map for that storm.
Names in
red are active at the present time. Bold name became hurricanes. Italics names indicate that the storm was a tropical storm that never reached hurricane strength. A number in parentheses is the maximum hurricane category reached by that storm.


Correction Alert

A wording problem has been found in the "Cloud Formation" Discovery File on page 5: "These tiny droplets condense onto solid particles ...", although correct could be misread as the already formed droplets collecting around particles rather than the original condensation of the droplets occurring onto the particles. Similarly with "additional water droplets attach themselves to the surrounding particles".

Another problem was found in the figure on page 36. The cross-section shown for the stationary front is actually a cross-section of an occluded front which is one in which a cold front has caught up with a warm front thus lifting all the warm air off the ground as shown in the figure. A stationary front is one that still has warm air at the ground on one side and cold air on the other side (as suggested by the map symbol) and thus could turn into a warm front or a cold front if it starts moving.

Thanks to Dr. Steven Carson (Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory (GFDL) of NOAA) for catching these errors and providing the correct information.

Building and Testing A Hurricane Resistant Building

Roger Johnson (science teacher, Maplewood Middle School, Maplewood, NJ) has designed a great new activity to go with Hurricane! Click here to read about his activity: Hurricane-Resistant Building Design


Seeing Into the Heart of a Hurricane

Despite the forecasts that Hurricane Opal would hit their town in a little more than 24 hours, the residents of Pensacola, Florida, remained relatively calm on October 3, 1995. They pulled their boats out of the water, boarded up the beachfront businesses and went about their daily routines, fearing no more than perhaps a few fallen trees and a missed day of work. At that time, the National Hurricane Center predicted that Opal would remain a Category 1 storm, packing peak winds of around 90 miles per hour---a veritable creampuff as far as hurricanes go.

Then overnight, as the hurricane moved across the Gulf of Mexico towards the city, something happened that no one predicted. The hurricane gathered energy from some then unseen reserves, jumped up in intensity to a strong Category 4 storm with peak winds of 150 mph, and threatened to turn Pensacola into a deluge of seawater and rain. The whole region went into a frenzy. The residents gathered what they could, evacuated their homes, and lined up bumper to bumper on Interstate 110 in an effort to flee.

What happened to the forecast and the forecasters? Get the answer from NASA's Earth Observatory.


As with all Event-Based Science modules, much of the information you need is provided in Hurricane!. To help you further, the section below contains a list of World-Wide Web sites where additional information about hurricanes is available. Point to and click on the highlighted words to be linked with stormy web pages.

Links To Hurricane! Related Web Sites
(Links are checked monthly. They were working on the date of the last update.)

  • National Hurricane Center Go to this site for the latest official information on active hurricanes and tropical storms.
  • UNISYS Weather - Hurricane points you to a lot of facts about hurricanes including tracking information for this hurricane season. It is complete with pictures and histories of hurricanes including Gilbert, Hugo, Mitch, and Andrew. You'll also get information on hurricane names and force data.
  • NASA Hurricane Resource Page  A great site for images and animations.
Hurricane Andrew Sequence

Hurricane Andrew Sequence - NASA

  • NODS Climate Visualization This is a great site that allows students to graph and download data from the World's Weather Data Archive. As you work to complete the Hurricane! task, you might want to plot real weather data from your city. This site will give you graphs of different weather measurements for the year and month the hurricane actually hit--a great addition to your newspaper.

Damage Caused by Hurricane Isabel, 2003
Courtesy US Fish and Wildlife Service

Courtesy, Cedar Key Chamber of Commerce

Pelican
  • Video - Hurricane Andrew as it Happened

 

 
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Last updated on Wednesday, May 07, 2008
Developed by Frank Weisel
Maintained by Russ Wright
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