Weather Projects for Young Scientists: Experiments and Science Fair Ideas
This photo taken by the space shuttle shows Earth's lower atmospheric layers lit by the setting sun The bottom layer is the troposphere and the top brighter layer is the stratos phere Layers of Air Scientists divide the atmosphere into four main lay ers See diagram on page 3 The layer closest to the ground is the troposphere It goes from the surface to about 7 miles 11 km up It has the most air and moisture of all the layers It's where most weather happens In this layer temperature decreases with height so higher altitudes are colder The stratos phere is from about 7 to 30 miles 11 to 48 km above the ground There is little mixing between the stratosphere and the troposphere so hardly any water vapor and dust make it into the stratosphere At the top of the stratosphere and into the mesos phere is the ozone layer the band of O3 Or
that blocks much of the sun's dangerous ultraviolet UV radiation from reaching the earth's surface Ozone blocks UV radiation by absorbing it While doing so it also heats up the stratosphere which is actually warmer at its top than at its bottom The mesosphere is from 30 to 50 miles 48 to 80 km above the earth The temperatures in this layer again begin to decrease with height reaching as low as 90°F 68°C No commercial aircraft fly this high only research weather balloons The thermosphere is the layer from 50 to 180 miles 80 to 290 km up or more After it is interplanetary space or the exos phere It gets super hot in the thermosphere up to more than 3 000°F 1 650°C The lower part of the thermosphere is also called the ionosphere and con tains electrically charged particles or ions Radio waves are reflected back to the earth by this layer It s also where high energy atomic particles from the sun collide with gases and produce beautiful streaks of colored light called auroras or the northern
The Atmosphere's Layers Pressure mb Pa Height mi km Approx Temp Layers of the of Layers F PC Atmosphere 36 000 60 000 3 600 6 000 360 600 2 200 1 200 T thermosphere 10 10 180 300 0 01 10 53 85 150 100 mesosphere ozone layer stratosphere 250 25 000 7 11 60 50 troposphere 1 000 68 20 100 000 Atmospheric Poster You can make a great poster for your room of the lay ers of the atmosphere Start by covering a section of a wall with paper or poster board Use the information in The Atmosphere’s Layers diagram on page 3 to help you draw the layers in correct proportions If you have about 10 feet 3 meters of wall height use the scale of 1 cm 1 km Once the layers are drawn and labeled find out
the characteristics of each atmospheric layer Then write up an informational caption for each layer and paste it onto the poster inside the correct layer Include the atmospheric layer's temperature gases atmospheric phenomena and what human made air craft travel in that layer You can also illustrate the layer with jets space shuttles meteorites satellites etc o Fast Fact The air around and above us the atmosphere weighs 11 000 000 000 000 000 000 pounds 4 950 000 000 000 000 000 kg Science Fair Spin Create a three dimensional diorama of the layers of the atmosphere The Weight of Air Air is invisible and may seem like it's made up of nothing at all But the gases in air have weight and
