HEAT AND MONSTER BINGO: AN INSTRUCTIONAL BOARD GAME TO LEARN TEMPERATURE AND HEAT

Physics is a subject that plays an important role in our daily life. It is a basic for the development of advanced technology. Even though it is an important subject, some high school students are not interested in learning physics. The low motivation to learn physics are caused by several reasons such as difficult material, boring classes, dislike for the teachers, and so on. Low motivation in learning physics cause negative attitude while learning physics and thus students cannot get optimal learning achievements. In this study, we developed a board game called “Heat and Monster Bingo” to make students to be interested in learning physics. The instructional game “Heat and Monster Bingo” covers topics of temperature and heat. We developed the board games in Indonesian and English so that students can learn physics in bilingual way. The broad game has gone through expert appraisal and has been tested to a group of students consisting of 27 high school students. The data were gathered through questionnaire filled by the students. According to the questionnaire data, 88.47% of the students agree that the physics learning medium in the form of board games is interesting and able to help them in studying temperature and heat

Variability modes of precipitation along a Central Mediterranean area and their relations with ENSO, NAO, and other climatic patterns

This study analyses a century-long set of precipitation time series in the Central Mediterranean (encompassing the Greek Ionian and the Italian Puglia regions) and investigates the statistically significant modes of the interannual precipitation variability using efficient methods of spectral decomposition. The statistical relations and the possible physical couplings between the detected modes and the global or hemispheric patterns of climatic variability (the El Niño Southern Oscillation or ENSO, the North Atlantic Oscillation or NAO, the East Atlantic or EA, the Scandinavian or SCAND, and others) were examined in the time-frequency domain and low-order synchronization events were sought. Significant modes of precipitation variability were detected in the Taranto Gulf and the southern part of the Greek Ionian region at the sub-decadal scales (mostly driven by the SCAND pattern) and particularly at the decadal and quasi-decadal scales, where strong relations found with the ENSO activity (under complex implications of EA and NAO) prior to the 1930s or after the early-1970s. The precipitation variations in the Adriatic stations of Puglia are dominated by significant bi-decadal modes which found to be coherent with the ENSO activity and also weakly related with the Atlantic Ocean sea surface temperature intrinsic variability. Additionally, important discontinuities characterize the evolution of precipitation in certain stations of the Taranto Gulf and the Greek Ionian region during the early-1960s and particularly during the early-1970s, followed by significant reductions in the mean annual precipitation. These discontinuities seem to be associated with regional effects of NAO and SCAND, probably combined with the impact of the 1970s climatic shift in the Pacific and the ENSO variability

PELATIHAN PRAKTIKUM FLUIDA STATIS SECARA HANDS ON DALAM MELATIH KETERAMPILAN PROSES SAINS PESERTA DIDIK SMA PASCA COVID-19

Abstrak: Keterampilan proses sains (KPS) merupakan salah satu aspek penting yang dibutuhkan oleh peserta didik saat ini. Berdasarkan hasil kajian, KPS peserta didik SMP pasca COVID-19 rendah pada beberapa indikator. Oleh sebab itu perlu adanya kegiatan yang dapat melatihkan KPS yaitu dengan memberikan layanan praktikum fluida statis berupa praktikum pipa hare secara hands on yang digunakan untuk melatih KPS peserta didik pasca COVID-19. Metode pengabdian ini yaitu ceramah dan eksperimen dengan 3 tahapan: tahap persiapan, pelaksanaan, dan evaluasi. Peserta dalam pengabdian ini yaitu peserta didik kelas XI SMA Swasta di Surabaya dengan jumlah sebanyak 329 orang. Hasil kegiatan menunjukkan adanya antusias peserta didik dalam merangkai alat, mengambil data, menganalisis data, dan membuat kesimpulan. Hal ini yang dapat dilakukan dalam melatih KPS peserta didik dengan melakukan praktikum secara langsung. Selain itu, 91,58% peserta didik menyatakan bahwa pelatihan praktikum pipa hare sangat menarik dan membuat peserta didik mengingat kembali cara untuk melakukan praktikum dan mengambil data yang baik dan benar.Abstract: Science process skills (SPS) are one of the crucial aspects required by students nowadays. Based on the study results, the SPS of junior high school students post COVID-19 are low in several indicators. Therefore, there is a need for activities that can train SPS, which is achieved by providing a hands-on static fluid laboratory service in the form of a “pipa hare” experiment, aimed at enhancing the SPS of students post COVID-19. This engagement method involves lectures and experiments with 3 stages: preparation, execution, and evaluation. The participants in this service were 329 eleventh-grade students from a private high school in Surabaya. The results of the activity indicate the enthusiasm of the students in assembling equipment, collecting data, analyzing data, and drawing conclusions. These activities contribute to training the SPS of students through direct practical experience. Additionally, 91.58% of the students expressed that the hare pipe experiment training was highly engaging and helped them recall the proper procedures for conducting the experiment and collecting accurate data

Meteorological effects of the 20 March 2015 solar eclipse over the United Kingdom

On 20 March 2015 a deep partial eclipse of the Sun, the most significant since the 11 August 1999 total solar eclipse, occurred over the UK. No comparably deep UK solar eclipse will occur until 2026 (e.g. Williams 1996, Espenak 1987). It is well known that solar eclipses cause transient meteorological effects, the most obvious of which is a drop in temperature, but – because total or major partial solar eclipses are fairly rare from any one point on the Earth’s surface and many areas are not well instrumented - there are relatively few systematic studies covering a wide region. The UK has one of the densest networks of weather stations compared with many other parts of the world. This applies to both amateur and professional station networks. Therefore the 2015 event was a unique opportunity to gather and analyse meteorological data. This has already been done for the main Met Office network of Meteorological Monitoring System sites (Hanna et al. 2016, Clark 2016), so here I present the results of a similar exercise based on amateur weather stations. I compare the meteorological effects of the 2015 eclipse over the UK with the 11 August 1999 eclipse for which I carried out a previous study (Hanna 2000)

The Total Solar Eclipse of March 2006: overview

International audienceThis paper provides an overview of integrated, multi-disciplinary effort to study the effects of a total solar eclipse on the environment, with special focus on the atmosphere. On the occasion of the 29 March 2006 total solar eclipse, visible over the Eastern Mediterranean, several research and academic institutes organised co-ordinated experimental campaigns, at different distances from the totality and in various environments in terms of air quality. The detailed results are presented in a number of scientific papers included in a Special Issue of Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics. The effects of the eclipse on the meteorology and the spectral solar radiation, the chemical response of the atmosphere to the abrupt "switch off" of the sun and the induced changes in the stratosphere and the ionosphere, have been among the issues covered. The rare event of a total solar eclipse provided the opportunity to evaluate 1-D and 3-D radiative transfer models (in the atmosphere and underwater), mesoscale meteorological, regional air quality and photochemical box models, against measurements. Within the challenging topics of this effort has been the investigation of eclipse impacts on ecosystems (field crops and marine plankton) and the identification of eclipse induced gravity waves, for the first time with simultaneous measurements at three altitudes namely the troposphere, the stratosphere and the ionosphere

Urban energy exchanges monitoring from space

One important challenge facing the urbanization and global environmental change community is to understand the relation between urban form, energy use and carbon emissions. Missing from the current literature are scientific assessments that evaluate the impacts of different urban spatial units on energy fluxes; yet, this type of analysis is needed by urban planners, who recognize that local scale zoning affects energy consumption and local climate. However, satellite-based estimation of urban energy fluxes at neighbourhood scale is still a challenge. Here we show the potential of the current satellite missions to retrieve urban energy budget, supported by meteorological observations and evaluated by direct flux measurements. We found an agreement within 5% between satellite and in-situ derived net all-wave radiation; and identified that wall facet fraction and urban materials type are the most important parameters for estimating heat storage of the urban canopy. The satellite approaches were found to underestimate measured turbulent heat fluxes, with sensible heat flux being most sensitive to surface temperature variation (-64.1, +69.3 W m-2 for ±2 K perturbation); and also underestimate anthropogenic heat flux. However, reasonable spatial patterns are obtained for the latter allowing hot-spots to be identified, therefore supporting both urban planning and urban climate modelling

Unlocking pre-1850 instrumental meteorological records

A global inventory of early instrumental meteorological measurements is compiled that comprises thousands of mostly nondigitized series, pointing to the potential or weather data rescu