Extended Abstract (216K)J1.7
Force 5: Comparing the great storms of Earth and Space
Carolyn Sumners, Houston Museum of Natural Science, Houston, TX; and P. Reiff
The same forces that create a cool breeze in spring or warm sunshine on the beach can sometimes converge into events of great scope and destructive power. Energy in our world constantly flows through natural cycles where heat, pressure, and radiation bring gradual changes in the environment. These changes periodically transform into catastrophic events. For the most powerful we reserve the title, force five.
Thus begins a unique full-dome digital theater production called Force 5. For 20 minutes audiences are immersed in the most deadly storms in our world: the hurricane, tornado, and coronal mass ejection. Each section introduces audiences to a different storm and explains what happens when the storm reaches force 5 in terms of energy stored and released. Each section ends with a full-dome rendered force 5 storm complete with appropriate sights and sounds. The familiar hurricane and tornado provide an appropriate introduction to the less familiar CME.
Hurricanes begin..... Hurricanes are heat engines collecting energy from the warm, humid air over the tropical oceans and releasing this heat through the condensation of water vapor into water droplets in thunderstorms of the eyewall and rainbands. The energy in a hurricane can also be thought of as the kinetic energy generated in maintaining the strong swirling winds.
Tornadoes begin ..... Between the Rocky and Appalachian Mountains, from Iowa to the Gulf of Mexico, thunderstorms develop. These turbulent giants are created when warm humid air from the Gulf collides with cool dry air from the Rockies. But thunderstorms themselves don’t constitute a force five event. As a thunderstorm grows, the condensed moisture forms a thunderhead cloud that can rise 50,000 feet into the sky. Within the thunderhead a region of spinning air forms and stretches vertically. When this area of rotation lowers below the base of the storm, it becomes a wall cloud. From this wall cloud, nature’s most violent and unpredictable storm descends to touch the ground… the tornado.
CMEs begin.... As we leave the Earth to live on the moon and on other worlds in our solar system, we trade our dangerous hurricanes and tornadoes for a more violent and deadly foe: the Solar Storm. Energy from the sun's core travels outwards to its atmosphere where it escapes as radiation and rising columns of gas. The transfer of energy to the boiling surface distorts the lines of a magnetic field around the sun. This distortion of the field stores energy and builds in intensity. When released, a solar flare occurs, often accompanied by a coronal mass ejection, spewing out over a million tons of solar particles toward Earth. These solar events occur at a magnitude of violent force and energy that equals the power of a billion hydrogen bombs.
The show Force 5 required 200,000 hours of computer time to render and composite. It has played as a public and school program in the Burke Baker Planetarium and is scheduled for release nationally in high definition this fall.
The accompanying curriculum materials use activities with hurricanes and tornadoes to familiarize students with concepts ranging from energy conservation to geographic coordinates. These activities prepare students to study the less familiar CMEs, focusing on concepts from energy conservation and flow to geographic location of solar disturbances over the Earth.
This presentation shows excerpts from the Force 5 presentation and sample activities suitable for classroom use.
Supplementary URL: http://earth.rice.edu
Joint Session 1, Education and Outreach Activities in Space Weather (Joint Between the 13th Symposium on Education and the Symposium on Space Weather) (Room 615/16)
Monday, 12 January 2004, 1:30 PM-5:30 PM, Room 615/616
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