Clouds and Lightning

Thursday (19/02/2009)

a) A glance of the weather
* The kids kept telling me, "It's raining". It wasn't very heavy and the sky was not dark. We hoped for a rainbow. However, there wasn't any.

b) Kids : Questions and Answers
* Ze Yan: Why are the clouds dark?
* When the clouds are thinner, the sunlight could shine through. However, as water evaporates, the clouds get thicker and the sunlight gets difficult to shine through....that's the reason.
* Ze yan: Not because of the factory smoke?
* Teacher: No.

c) The Lightning.
Justin, Jin Shan: Why is there lightning then?
* I drew picture of cars caught in traffic jam.
* Similar to the clouds, when there are more clouds; they tend to rub against one another especially when the wind starts to blow.
* Then, I got two kids pretending to be clouds. They banged into one another.......(acting)....they giggled and imagined the loud sound of thunder and flashes of lightnings!

d) Safety
* We saw pictures of places we should avoid when it rains. We should avoid tall trees, big spaces like a field and also in the swimming pool.
* We should take shelter in a safe building.
* Song Chuan and Eugene said that, there's a rod that will channel the lightning electrons to the ground.
* For this, I showed them a plug. I unscrewed it and showed them the colours of the three wires.
Then, we learned about the Earth wire (green and yellow) which will channel the electrons to the Earth.

e) Experiment: Static Electricity
* This is similar to the concept that clouds when rubbed against one another, would produce ectricity and causes LIGHTNING.
* We took a plastic ruler, a cloth and some aluminium foil. We rubbed the ruler with the dry cloth. We counted until 50 seconds. The kids then saw how it attracted the aluminium foil.
* Similar to magnet.

f) Our blooming flower.
* Yes! It has bloomed. It's purple and small. The kids could remember to water the plant. However, I reminded them to be cautious as too much water would cause overflow.