Hurricane House

Click this picture if you are 8 to 10 years old. Roofs Resistant
to Very Strong Winds

Click this picture if you are in middle school or high school.

Grade School: Out of shoeboxes, you can make model houses which have removable roofs of different slants ("pitches"). Then, using a fan, you can try to blow the roofs off. Which pitches are easiest to blow off, and which are the most resistant to the wind? If you are in one of the grades between 3 and 5, click the "THIS" button to the left and you will be shown how to do this experiment.

Middle School: You need a more difficult a project, determine just how much "lift" the fan's strongest wind has on the various roofs. Each house can be placed on a massing balance, and the fan turned on. Measure how much lighter the houses get. You should also have the wind strike the house from various angles, and then make graphs of your results. If you are in middle school, click the "THIS" button to the left for more details.

High School: The younger students were looking at the problem like an architect designing a new home. But what about "retrofitting" existing homes to make their roofs more wind resistant? You might make models of your own homes and test them for "lift" as the middle schoolers would do, but then you must make changes to your house that would cut the lift at least by half. Changing a whole roof is very expensive. Are there less expensive ways to "foil the airfoil"? If you are in high school, click the "THIS" button to the left for more details.

	Grade School: Out of shoeboxes, you can make model houses which have removable roofs of different slants ("pitches"). Then, using a fan, you can try to blow the roofs off. Which pitches are easiest to blow off, and which are the most resistant to the wind? If you are in one of the grades between 3 and 5, click the "THIS" button to the left and you will be shown how to do this experiment.
	Middle School: You need a more difficult a project, determine just how much "lift" the fan's strongest wind has on the various roofs. Each house can be placed on a massing balance, and the fan turned on. Measure how much lighter the houses get. You should also have the wind strike the house from various angles, and then make graphs of your results. If you are in middle school, click the "THIS" button to the left for more details.
	High School: The younger students were looking at the problem like an architect designing a new home. But what about "retrofitting" existing homes to make their roofs more wind resistant? You might make models of your own homes and test them for "lift" as the middle schoolers would do, but then you must make changes to your house that would cut the lift at least by half. Changing a whole roof is very expensive. Are there less expensive ways to "foil the airfoil"? If you are in high school, click the "THIS" button to the left for more details.