Siemens Summer School
@ Melbourne University
January 13 -15th, 2004
What's it all about?
The annual Siemens Summer School was run in
a number of departments around Melbourne University during the 2004 summer
school holidays. The aim of the programme is to provide high school
students with a chance to experience areas of science first hand, and get
a chance to participate in a number of interesting activities in the lab,
or in the field.
What did we do?
When visiting the Atmospheric and Ocean Sciences
section, several different activities were planned that focussed upon general
understanding of meteorology. Firstly by looking at weather charts
and satellite images, we could appreciate the general circulation prevailing
over Melbourne at the time. We then made a few very basic observations
of wind speed and direction and took some measurements of temperature at
various levels above the ground. To finish, everyone had a close
look at a theodolite which is an instument used for manual tracking of
weather balloons. We then set off a number of balloons filled with
helium and tracked them for as long as we could. The record stands
at around 10 minutes!
The 2004 team:
On the Atmospheric Science team this year
was:
- Lynette
Bettio (co-ordinator)
- Stephanie Niall
- Vaughan
Barras
Photos:
...setting up the theodolite...
...hmmm, how does this work?
...everyone ready?
...there she goes!
Credits:
Images kindly provided by Frances Barbour.