Assignment 3: Hurricanes Web Assignment
Assignment 3: Hurricanes Web Assignment
Access the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Create-A-Cane site , or copy and paste this address into your browser Follow the instructions below to answer the questions.
Use this interactive game to create a “perfect storm.” Go through and adjust the atmospheric conditions to produce a powerful hurricane. If you get the conditions perfect, you will get a score of 80 and the simulation will prompt you to answer a few questions. If you go on to answer the questions correctly, you can boost your score to 100. It may take you several attempts to get your perfect storm and you do not need to report your score. Use the help buttons to understand how each factor contributes to the formation of the storm. Once you are satisfied with your score, answer the questions below. Copy and paste the questions into a word document.
1. What types of winds were required in each level of the atmosphere? Describe the wind speed and direction at each level.
2. Why is it critical that all levels blow in the same direction to form a tropical storm? What happens when you have lower winds blowing a different direction than upper winds?
3. It seems intuitive that stronger winds would be better for forming a hurricane. Why is this not the case?
4. What was the ideal latitude range for the formation of the tropical storm? Why?
5. Given that tropical storms/hurricanes require high moisture and temperatures, why can’t tropical storms form at the equator (0 degrees latitude), where temperatures and moisture are generally very high?
6. What moisture level was required for each of the atmospheric layers?
7. Why is moisture critical to form a hurricane?
8. How did the sea temperature affect your score? Why?
9. Which of the above factors seem to make the biggest difference in your score and why?
10. Explain why hurricanes dissipate so quickly once they make landfall.
Assignment 2: Parallax angle and Hertzsprung-Russell diagrams
Download the assignment worksheet by clicking and follow the instructions to complete it.
You must proofread your paper. But do not strictly rely on your computer’s spell-checker and grammar-checker; failure to do so indicates a lack of effort on your part and you can expect your grade to suffer accordingly. Papers with numerous misspelled words and grammatical mistakes will be penalized. Read over your paper – in silence and then aloud – before handing it in and make corrections as necessary. Often it is advantageous to have a friend proofread your paper for obvious errors. Handwritten corrections are preferable to uncorrected mistakes.
Use a standard 10 to 12 point (10 to 12 characters per inch) typeface. Smaller or compressed type and papers with small margins or single-spacing are hard to read. It is better to let your essay run over the recommended number of pages than to try to compress it into fewer pages.
Likewise, large type, large margins, large indentations, triple-spacing, increased leading (space between lines), increased kerning (space between letters), and any other such attempts at “padding” to increase the length of a paper are unacceptable, wasteful of trees, and will not fool your professor.
The paper must be neatly formatted, double-spaced with a one-inch margin on the top, bottom, and sides of each page. When submitting hard copy, be sure to use white paper and print out using dark ink. If it is hard to read your essay, it will also be hard to follow your argument.
