Category: Cobb Vicki

Flying into the Eye of a Storm

3/15/2023

Vicki Cobb

The Master Chef of Kids’ Hands-On Science

Dr. Hugh Willoughby, of Florida International University, was one of the first meteorologists to ever fly into the eye of a hurricane.  Now the job is done by the Hurricane Hunters—a team of pilots, navigators and meteorologists who fly into these dangerous storms to help keep us safe.  Here’s what I learned when I interviewed Hugh Willoughby:

What is a hurricane eye?

Hurricanes are circular storms so the wind blows around in a circle. The eye is the center of a hurricane.  If a circular storm doesn’t have an eye, it is not a hurricane—it’s a tropical storm.  The eye is surrounded by a ring of clouds called the eyewall. Within the eye, there is a calm area that is cloudless all the way up to space.   The winds are strongest just at the inner edge of the eyewall, which is composed of violent thunderstorms with strong updrafts and downdrafts.   The hurricane pinwheels out from the eyewall as spiral bands of wind and rain, which stretch for miles.  When a hurricane’s eye passes over land, the storm suddenly stops and the sun comes out.  But the relief is short-lived as the other side of the storm soon slams into the area.

How do Hurricane Hunters help us?

Hurricane Hunters fly into the eye of hurricanes that are heading towards our shores to help predict where the storm will make landfall.  On every mission they must find the center of the storm at least twice and at most four times over a period of several hours because the change in position of the center of the eye tells us the direction the storm is moving and how fast it is moving. They also drop packages called dropsondes that contain measuring instruments for air pressure, humidity, and wind speed at the eyewall.  These measurements tell us the destructive power of the storm or its “category.” During a hurricane season (from June 1 to November 30) the Hurricane Hunters and their fleet of ten airplanes can get data on three storms, twice a day.  So flying into a hurricane’s eye is pretty routine for them.

Is it dangerous?

The planes can easily handle changes in air pressure and wind speeds that create “bumps” and it can be pretty bumpy going through the eyewall.   But, in more than sixty years there have been only four accidents. All on board agree that the view of the eyewall from inside the eye is worth it! The plane has transported them inside nature’s most magnificent amphitheater.
(c) Vicki Cobb 2014

Harvey and Irma have alerted everyone to the dangers of a hurricane. We can predict the course of a hurricane by flying into a hurricane and repeatedly measuring wind speed, humidity, air pressure, and temperature. Here's a video that will give you a taste of what it looks like as you approach an eye wall. It is filmed from a plane penetrating Hurricane Katrina.

When you hear about a Category "3" hurricane, or any other category number, the Saffir-Simpson Scale tells you just what that number means.

Look at the amazing number of instruments contained in a Dropsonde.

Vicki Cobb's latest book, How Could We Harness a Hurricane? shows how the scientific understanding of air, water and energy come together to form hurricanes. It includes lots of hands-on activities that you can do. Engineers look at science and try and figure out ways the steer a hurricane away from populated areas or weaken them. There are lots of questions in the book and some of them don't have answers, yet.

MLA 8 Citation
Cobb, Vicki. "Flying into the Eye of a Storm." Nonfiction Minute, iNK Think Tank, 18 Sept. 2017, www.nonfictionminute.org/the-nonfiction-minute/ flying-into-the-eye-of-a-storm.

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What Can You Learn from a Holiday Light and a Glass Cup?

2/9/2023

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Vicki Cobb
The Master Chef of Kids’ Hands-on science

A land surveyor sends a heliograph to his partner more than 100 years ago. He must have been fluent in Morse Code

How do you know it’s the holiday season? There are lights everywhere sending that message. But that’s not the only kind of message light can send. A little more than 100 years ago when a telegraph began to become popular, people sent wireless messages called heliographs. They were made of flashes of light in Morse code (the same pattern of short and long as used in telegraphs) by reflecting the sun’s rays with a mirror. When the mirror was at a particular angle to the sun, it reflected a flash of bright light to observer miles away.

Note where the red light from the bulb emerges on the opposite side. Some internally reflected light is emerging from a ridge in the glass. Photo by Alexandra Siy

Maybe there’s another way to send light. Put a holiday light on one rim of a heavy glass measuring cup or dish. See where the light emerges on the rim on the opposite side. Move the light back and forth and watch what happens on the other side. The light travels down the side, and bends to go across the bottom and up the other side, but if you look at the cup sideways you can’t see the beam. Light stays inside the glass as it travels from rim to rim.

Could we make something like a wire from glass that can transmit light? Absolutely! An optical fiber is a flexible, transparent fiber made of glass or plastic that acts as a wire for light. Imagine a beam of light entering a fiber at exactly the right angle to bounce off the inside wall of the fiber where it meets the air. It is then reflected at exactly the same angle to bounce off the opposite wall making a zig-zag path until it reaches the end of the fiber. This internally reflected light stays inside the glass fiber as it travels at the speed of light.

HUGE quantities of all kinds of information—words, pictures, music, and videos—can now be sent through optical fibers, much more than through wires. A modern network with copper wiring can handle about 3,000 telephone calls at the same time, while a similar system using fiber optics can carry more than 30,000!

So when you hit “send,” know that your holiday message is a blinking beam of light, bouncing off the inside walls of a glass fiber on its speedy journey to friends and family. How ‘bout that!

Fiber optics can be made into holiday decorations. Note the bright light emerging from the ends of the fibers.

Want to know more about optics? Have a look at Vicki Cobb's book Light Action! She co-authored it with her son, Josh, who is an optical engineer and her other son, Theo, drew the pictures. It's full of experiments that let you use optics to:
-Bend light around corners
- Stop time with a pair of sunglasses
- Capture light on a silver tray
- Magnify pictures with an ice cube
- Pour light into your palm
- Project a big-screen image from your small TV
- Fool a doorbell with a bike reflector!
For more information, go here.

Vicki is a member of iNK's Authors on Call and is available for classroom programs through Field Trip Zoom, a terrific technology that requires only a computer, wifi, and a webcam. Click here to find out more.

MLA 8 Citation
Cobb, Vicki. "What Can You Learn from a Holiday Light and a Glass Cup?" Nonfiction Minute, iNK Think Tank, 14 Dec. 2017, www.nonfictionminute.org/ What-Can-You-Learn-from-a-Holiday-Light-and-a-Glass-Cup.

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I Met a Man About a Parrot

1/23/2023

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Vicki Cobb
The Master Chef of Kids' Hands-on Science

I’m often asked where I get my ideas for books. Let me give you an example:

The other day, when I was walking in a neighborhood park, there was a man doing whole-body lifts on a piece of exercise equipment with a huge, brilliantly–colored parrot on his shoulder. It was so unusual that, without thinking, I called out: “What a beautiful bird! May I take your picture?” I was full of questions so we chatted for a while.

Me: “What kind of bird is that?”

Scotty, the parrot-man: “She’s a green-winged macaw.”

Me: “What’s her name? How old is she?”

Scotty: “Her name is Lucky. She’s 2 ½ years old but she can live more than 60 years. She’s a vegetarian, like me. Her beak is a nut-cracker. ”

Lucky repeatedly kissed Scotty on the lips with her giant hooked beak as he turned to talk to her. She had been an expensive gift to him—they cost about $1500 at Bird Jungle, our local bird store. She couldn’t fly because he kept her wings clipped; it’s dangerous for a 2 ½ pound bird to be able to fly around the house. He had given her a bath that morning. She had communicated that she wanted one by putting her head under the faucet and looking at him.

“Why did she want a bath?” I asked. “Was she dirty?”

Scotty wasn’t sure why, except that it rains every day in her natural habitat—the rain forest. Then he pointed out a new feather on her neck. It was encased in a white sheath. A bath makes the sheath fall off and the feather fluffs up. Maybe that feels like undoing a pony tail

This is often how I get ideas for books. I find something interesting and start asking questions.   Of course, I paid a visit to Bird Jungle. What a noisy store! There I found more people to interview. It’s amazing how much you can learn from people who are experts.

After a while I ran out of questions. That’s because I didn’t know enough to keep going. How can I remedy that? Go read a book or two about green-winged macaws and other rain forest birds. It could lead to a book idea about the rain forest like:  This Place Is Wet.

When I write, I don’t write just about content.   I write what interests me about content. There’s a big difference.

A green-winged macaw is the second largest of all the macaws. They migrate between Argentina and the Amazon rain forest

Scotty doing full-body push ups with Lucky on his shoulder.

Does Vicki's story make you want to visit a store like Bird Jungle to meet a green-winged macaw?

Vicki made a trip to the Amazon rain forest with her good friend, Alaskan artist, Barbara Lavallee. You can find out what they learned there by reading This Place Is Wet. For more information about the book, click here.

Vicki Cobb is a member of iNK's Authors on Call and is available for classroom programs through FieldTripZoom, a terrific technology that requires only a computer, wifi, and a webcam. Click here to find out more.

MLA 8 Citation
Cobb, Vicki. "I Met a Man about a Parrot." Nonfiction Minute, iNK Think Tank, 18 Dec. 2017, www.nonfictionminute.org/the-nonfiction-minute/
I-Met-a-Man-About-a-Parrot. Accessed 18 Dec. 2017.

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How to Extinguish a Fire with a Bag of Potato Chips

1/10/2023

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Vicki Cobb

The Master Chef of Kids' Hands-on Science

Ever taste a stale potato chip? If not, here’s how to make one:

If you have an open bag of potato chips lying around, you can use them. Otherwise open a new bag.
Put a few fresh potato chips in a glass bowl in the sunlight and wait a day or two.
Taste one of these exposed potato chips.
Compare it to the taste of a chip from a brand new bag.

Big difference, no? It’s enough to worry a potato chip manufacturer. There are two things that make a potato chip stale. Can you guess what they are? Okay, I’ll tell you: Air (specifically oxygen in the air) and light. So potato chip manufacturers know that if they want to keep their chips fresh, they have to remove oxygen and light. How do they do that?

Take a close look at an opened bag of potato chips. It is foil-lined to make it light proof. An unopened bag is very puffy because it is filled with a gas. This puffiness protects the chips from breaking. But the gas in the bag is not air, which is a mixture of about 20% oxygen and 79% nitrogen. It is air without the oxygen, so it’s mostly nitrogen.

You can prove this. Oxygen is needed for fire to burn. If the air around a flame is flooded with nitrogen, the flame goes out. So you can use the gas in a bag of potato chips to put out a candle. Here’s how:

Light a candle. (Make sure you have an adult help you since this trick involves fire.)
Cut off the corner of a new bag of potato chips.
Gently squeeze some of the gas from the potato chip bag near the candle flame. If you squeeze too hard, it’s like blowing the flame out. You want it to go out because the nitrogen in the potato chip bag is quietly flowing into the space around the flame.

Now you know how to extinguish a flame with a bag of potato chips. You have also proved that there is no oxygen in a potato chip bag! And you know why!

Now go educate some grown-up.

Before being flooded with nitrogen

After being flooded with nitrogen

Vicki Cobb’s best known book is Science Experiments You Can Eat. This is the new third revision published in 2016.

Vicki Cobb is a member of iNK's Authors on Call and is available for classroom programs through Field Trip Zoom, a terrific technology that requires only a computer, wifi, and a webcam. Click here to find out more.

MLA 8 Citation
Cobb, Vicki. "How to Extinguish a Fire with a Bag of Potato Chips." Nonfiction Minute, iNK Think Tank, 2 Oct. 2017, www.nonfictionminute.org/the-nonfiction-minute/how-to-extinguish-a-fire-with-a-bag-of-potato-chips.

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Earth's Emergency Heat Valve: The Hurricane

11/23/2022

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Vicki Cobb
The Master Chef of Kids' Hands-on Science

Earth has a problem. The sun creates hot spots over land, in the air and in the water. That’s why there are winds, weather, and currents in the ocean as Earth tries to even out the heat, moving warmer masses of air and water to cooler areas.

During hurricane season ( from June 1-November 30), only 10 or 11 of the 80 tropical disturbances off the west coast of Africa (where most of our hurricanes originate) become large enough storms to be given a name. Only two or three of them hit the United States. They are not frequent but they are massive wind storms that can destroy life and property.

Do they do anything good at all? As far as the Earth is concerned, these largest of all storms are a safety valve to rapidly move heat that has been accumulating in the oceans up to the stratosphere (from 7 to 31 miles above the Earth’s surface). From there it will be transported through the air to over the North Pole. It’s the way Earth stops a fever.

Once a hurricane forms, it must have an ocean surface that is at least 80°F to keep moving and to grow. Under the storm, huge amounts of warm water become water vapor. Warm moist air rapidly rises through the spinning winds of the hurricane, up to the stratosphere. When moist air reaches the frigid (-70°F) stratosphere the water vapor quickly condenses to liquid water (rain) releasing its heat. This heat makes surrounding air molecules move faster forming winds.

How do hurricanes cool off the oceans? How do they move the heat? Here’s a clue: Wet your finger and wave it in the air. How does it feel? Pretty cool, I bet! That’s because the heat from your finger changes liquid water into water vapor (a gas) as your finger dries. Water vapor molecules store this extra heat. They rise because they are lighter than other air molecules.

So, a hurricane is a heat engine that moves water vapor from the ocean’s surface high enough to condense back into liquid water and release heat safely to the stratosphere forming rivers of wind that move it to the poles.

Scientists predict that global warming will increase the number and the power of the hurricanes as the ocean surfaces become increasingly warmer during our summers.

This diagram of the anatomy of a hurricane shows the direction of the winds. The blue represents cold air descending while the pink shows warm moist air rising. The outflow surface clouds form as water condenses into a "table-top" cloud, releasing heat that becomes wind. Kelvinsong via Wikimedia

Hurricane Isabel (2003) as seen from orbit during Expedition 7 of the International Space Station. The eye, eyewall, and surrounding rainbands, all characteristics of hurricanes, are clearly visible in this view from space. Image courtesy of Mike Trenchard, Earth Sciences & Image Analysis Laboratory, NASA Johnson Space Center

Vicki Cobb's How Could We Harness a Hurricane? offers questions and provides new points of view that may just change peoples' thinking by showing young readers the work scientists and engineers are doing to avoid future disasters. The book includes hands-on experiments that make science fun, be it at home or in the classroom. Here's a link to the book' s Trailer.

How Could We Harness a Hurricane was named a 2018 Best STEM Book K-12 by the National Science Teachers Association and the Children's Book Council.

Vicki is a member of iNK's Authors on Call so you can invite her to your classroom via iNK's videoconferening Zoom Room. Click here to find out more:

MLA 8 Citation
Cobb, Vicki. "Earth's Emergency Heat Valve: The Hurricane." Nonfiction Minute,
iNK Think Tank, 24 Apr. 2018, www.nonfictionminute.org/
the-nonfiction-minute/Earths-Emergency-Heat-Valve-The-Hurricane.

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Flying into the Eye of a Storm

What Can You Learn from a Holiday Light and a Glass Cup?

I Met a Man About a Parrot

How to Extinguish a Fire with a Bag of Potato Chips

Earth's Emergency Heat Valve: The Hurricane

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