For Educators
Introductory Research Activity
A draft introductory activity has been developed by Stanford Solar Center
to introduce students to the monitors and their data. This activity is
currently being tested in classrooms. It is best done with data from your
own monitor. However, sample data is available if you are interested in trying the
activity before you obtain a monitor:
SID Activities Teacher Guide (pdf)
Classroom Materials
The Chabot Space and Science Center
has partnered with the Stanford Solar Center to develop classroom materials,
laboratory activities, and teacher training for the Space Weather Monitor
Project. The focus of the materials is the Sun and Space Weather.
A
solar curriculum developed and tested at San Leandro
High School, San Leandro, California
has been successfully used and tested with various high
school general science classes. A brief description
is available at:
SLHS Solar Curriculum
Click above for a collection of student worksheets and research projects associated
with the Space Weather Monitors.
Other References
Simulations of the Ionosphere
For a simulation/visualization of how the ionosphere responds to day and night,
see Visualizing the Ionosphere.
Note that the videos represent a coronal mass ejection (CME) striking the
Earth, not a solar flare as the SIDs pick up. So only the day/night and
north/south hemisphere information is relevant to SID data.
Potential Research Projects
During periods
of low solar activity (e.g. 2006) it may be necessary to focus on aspects of
the data other than solar flares. Your students might be able to do something
intriguing related to the sunrise and sunset "signatures" that the monitors
pick up.
Your students might attempt to compare solar flare signatures from
various SID monitors to find out if latitude affects the signatures and
hence the ionospheric response to flares.
There is much your students can learn by trying to understand
the processes going on in the ionosphere. How and why do VLF
signals bounce off the ionosphere, and thus provide communication
"around" the Earth? Why are the daytime and nighttime SID signals
different? How does the Sun normally influence the ionosphere?
What happens to the ionosphere during a solar flare?
These are more questions of discovery rather than research, but they provide
an important background understanding for some of the research exercises
suggested.
"Antennas, to quote a friend, are one of life's eternal mysteries."
The SID Manual describes how to build a couple loop antennas, one
twice the diameter of the other. But the options for size, shape,
materials, and wire are almost unlimited.
Why? What is the best design and size for a SID antenna, for an
AWESOME one?
What are the tradeoffs?
Most of these answers are unknown. Perhaps your students would like to figure them
out. To get started, try reading:
Antenna
Basics
and look at our page of questions about antennas.
Your SID or AWESOME monitor can run 24 hours a day. Obviously,
solar activity will affect the ionosphere only during the
daytime. But many phenomena such as lighting storms and
gamma ray bursts have a dramatic effect on the nighttime ionosphere, when
effects from the Sun no longer drown them out.
Stanford's STAR Laboratory - VLF Group
investigates the Earth's electrical environment, lightning discharges, radiation belts,
and the ionosphere. The AWESOME instrument data is broad-band and
much more sensitive than the SID instrument's and thus more useful
for nighttime ionospheric research. If you have advanced students
who are interested in looking into this area, here are some
nighttime data suggestions.
Like predicting Earth's weather, predicting the occurrence
of a solar flare or storm is complex and difficult work,
an area that the professionals are just beginning to understand.
There is some intriguing research about whether large earthquakes are
associated with ionospheric changes caused by electromagnetic signals
released by the crushing of rock crystalline structures.
If so, then ionospheric changes might be a mechanism for major
earthquake prediction. This research is still young and controversial
and, if there are
effects, they may be way too subtle for the SID or even the AWESOME
instruments to pick up.
