Summer Weather Camps – Center for Earth and Environmental Science

Pressure is high, the atmosphere charged, and children are having fun while learning! Summer Weather Camps are in session!

CEES is partnering with RTV6 meteorologist Kevin Gregory to present Weather Camps at local libraries throughout Marion and Hamilton counties this summer.

CEES Education Coordinator, Gin Ranly, prepares a static electricity demonstration.

Kevin Gregory discusses high pressure systems.

At the camps, youngsters (and their accompanying adults) learn fun and useful information about the weather and weather-related phenomena. What makes lightning? When is a storm system considered a “severe” storm? Are raindrops really teardrop shaped? How do tornadoes form? Why is a cell phone better than a landline in a thunderstorm? What is the most famous movie of all time featuring a tornado?

Kevin shows how high pressure (outside the bottle) can force an egg into a bottle (area of low pressure) through a bottle neck that is much narrower than the egg.

Campers prepare for an experiment to illustrate evaporative cooling.

The events also showcase exciting, interactive activities that demonstrate various principles/phenomena, including charge separation and repulsion (static electricity), evaporative cooling, the consequences of air pressure differences (egg-in-a-bottle and Bernoulli Bags), and the extremely popular tornado-in-a-box.

Gin describes the process of tornado formation while CEES intern Samantha Sheahan adds dry ice to warm water to generate the proper conditions from which to create a tornado-in-a-box.

This summer’s Weather Camps are taking place at the Indianapolis Library – College Avenue Branch (July 10), Greenwood Library (July 17), Carmel-Clay Library (July 24), and Hamilton East Library (July 31). Camps run from 11:00 AM – 12:30 PM.

Are your children fascinated by atmospheric phenomena? Ask their school to request a visit from CEES’s mobile lab. The Energy of Storms is one of the many offerings in the Center’s Discovering the Science of the Environment program.