What's Hot? What's Not?

Overview

Objectives/Goals My project was to find out if temperature is affected by solar radiation. I predicted that on days with less solar radiation, the outdoor temperature would be cooler than on days with more solar radiation. Because solar radiation is the energy radiated in the form of waves or particles from the sun, it would make sense that the more radiation, the higher the temperature. Methods/Materials I collected three months worth of data from our school#s weather station. The data included solar radiation and temperature measurements from the same year (2001) and season (autumn). At first, I only collected data from one time every day, but then I realized that I needed complete daily data to get solid results. I printed out 13 strip charts from the weather station illustrating the correlation between solar radiation and temperature. Results After analyzing all of my data, I found that the overall pattern between temperature and solar radiation supported my hypothesis. When there were higher temperatures and less solar radiation, I found that it was due to the precipitation of a storm. There were only a few times when the solar radiation was noticeably higher than the temperatures. Conclusions/Discussion If I were to continue this project, I would make it into a yearly project involving all four seasons. I could then see if there was a correlation between seasonal temperatures and radiation measurements. My results supported my hypothesis, proving that temperature is affected by solar radiation.

Competition history

• CSEF 2002 Earth Sciences/ Planetary Sciences/ Physical Environments · Entry J0622

Resources

• CSEF project summary ↗

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