The Tech Savvy Teacher

The Tech Savvy Teacher

January 29, 2009
Volume 1, Issue 1

Temperature Time

Three teachers of Fantastic Elementary, Tausha, Mindy, and Emilie wanted to know what the difference between Fahrenheit and Celsius was. To find the answer to this question we began by filling a water bottle with cold water from the water fountain. Then we used a new kind of technology called a temperature probe to measure the temperature of the water. The interesting thing about the temperature probe is that it plugs directly into a computer and sends temperature measurements to the computer every few seconds. This type of technology being used in the classroom allows the students to gather data extremely quickly and have much more time to spend analyzing the data instead of just gathering it. This is such a cool technology that I am very excited to use in my classroom. Now back to the experiement, we measured the temperature of the water by placing the temperature probe in the water for 60 seconds.




The temperature probe was connected to the computer, so all the information that it gathered was transferred automatically to the computer. The computer program then told us the temperature of the water in Fahrenheit and Celsius. The temperature of the water was 14 degrees Celsius and 57.2 degrees Fahrenheit.




Next we filled the water bottle with hot water and measured the temperature of the water for 60 seconds.



This time the water temperature was 46 degrees Celsius and 102 degrees Fahrenheit. Once we collected the data it was time to calculate the difference between Fahrenheit and Celsius.



To do this, we subtracted the Celsius degrees from the Fahrenheit degrees for each example.

Cold Water: 57.2 - 14 = 43.2
Hot Water: 102 - 46 = 66

After completing our calculations we came to the conclusion that the difference between Fahrenheit and Celsius is dependent on how high or low the temperature is. Come back next week to find out the conversion formula!