"Severe weather bug" is a term we use to describe the little weather map we put on the screen during severe weather. I'm not sure how it got that name...maybe because it sometimes bugs our viewers. ;-)The other weather bug around here is the cricket! Try this out this weekend and see if your local crickets are good thermometers. And be sure to leave a comment and let us know if it works. It's fun for the kids too!
Have a wonderful weekend!
6 comments:
It will be hard for me to do unless i go outside since our AC is still on.
What happened to the sunny forecast? It's raining right now and the radar is quite colored with precipitation. Even though we can predict the weather with more technology than ever before, God has the last word.
Okay, I checked with my friendly backyard Cricket who chirped 49x during the 15 seconds that I was timing him. That would make the backyard temp 86 (sounded a tad high to me - but my backyard thermometer was in the sun so was reading in the 90's, obviously not the correct ambient air temp). So I checked with NWS which claimed that the current temp was 82 degrees.
Explanations I can think of for the discrepancy:
- NWS reading was taken in a different location at a different time. Maybe there really was a 4 degree difference between when & where the NWS reading was taken and when & where I was counting cricket chirps.
- Maybe my cricket was in the sun (just like when a thermometer reads higher because the sun is shining on it).
- Maybe I counted wrong, or wasn't careful enough about measuring exactly 15 seconds (I used an analog watch hand, which isn't exactly a precision measuring device).
- Or some combo of the above.
Basically, for such a casual experiment, I'd count that as "close enough to be amazed" even if it didn't come out like the textbook said it was supposed to.
Very cool!
Wow, talk about a scientific analysis! You forgot the part where you yell at the experiment for not doing what you were expecting it to do, though.
Adam can tell you how much I yell at inanimate objects (TV, computer, and so on).
Yes, did I ever mention that besides being a Weather Buff I'm actually really a Science Buff too?
When I was in school I got really good at analyzing why the experiment didn't come out the way the textbook said it was supposed to, because that's how my experiments always turned out (ahem).
Hmm, maybe that's why I decided to become a lay person - science buff rather than a scientist. (heh heh)
Hmm, like any good science buff, I attempted to repeat the experiment. This time (true to my own treacherous science history) it really tanked.
Tonight my Cricket was chirping away at 44 chirps per 15 seconds, which would yield an estimated outdoor air temp of 81 degrees. That is off by about 10 degrees (my backyard thermometer, now no longer in the sun, says 71 degrees, which "feels" about right, & pretty much agrees with what NWS is reporting in this area).
I think my Cricket must have an abnormally high metabolism.
Are there any other factors that can influence the rate of cricket chirps, such as fear of predators, or the presence of a cricket of the opposite sex?
Maybe there's a confounding factor messing up my data that I don't know about. (Reminds me of when all my high school chemistry experiments kept going South because I was such a failure at washing beakers.)
Post a Comment