Senior Project - Shaman

The Children's Museum of Denver is developing an earth/environmental science lab which includes a weather studio containing a working replica of a TV studio with live equipment for videotaping weather reports and programs. The studio will monitor weather data from KCNC-TV in Denver and from a rooftop weather station at the museum. It also will receive feeds of satellite and radar images. One aspect of this project was to help children understand weather as a consequence of variables in wind, humidity, air pressure, temperature, etc. Another aspect of this project was to focus on the conditions for violent weather such as blizzards, tornados, hurricanes and thunder storms. The students, consulting with a weatherperson from KCNC-TV, a scientist from NCAR, and a science educator from the museum, produced software for use by children in grades 4-12. The software, running on an IBM PS/2 MULTIMEDIA SLC touchscreen workstation, allows the children to enter atmospheric data, make weather predictions, run weather simulations and access video disk archives depicting various weather phenomena.