Fog formation, smog situations and air quality in high school physics education

Abstract

It has become a worldwide expectation that the physics curriculum includes everyday knowledge as well. One important field that can make the curriculum more colourful and exciting is the field of meteorology. In our paper, a three-lesson-long curriculum for high schools will be presented on how to teach the connection between fog formation and air quality. The international educational experience of this particular topic will be surveyed, mainly in the countries of the Carpathian Basin, moreover, the measurement processes and education methods used in the GLOBE Program will also be presented. The experimental curriculum consists of three parts. In the first part air humidity and the concepts of absolute and relative humidity are discussed. Through a few specific exercises, the students participating in the program learn to specify relative humidity and become acquainted with fog formation. It is shown via an experiment that air cooling at a saturated state is not enough to form fog because condensational nuclei are needed for the formation of tiny water drops. In the 2nd lesson, the concept of temperature inversion and its connection to fog and air pollution are discussed. Using Internet websites the students collect information about the formation of smog, its types, occurrence, and the conditions for declaring smog alerts. In the 3rd lesson, the methods of air pollution analysis and different air pollutants are discussed. Websites, where the students can follow the air pollution data of their area, are used. Based on these, problems related to the interpretation of the data will be solved. The information which is available on the website of the European Environment Agency is also touched on.