Preschool and elementary weather activities often involve a lot of smiling suns and raindrops shaped like… “raindrops.” It’s the name given to the shape that’s pointed at the top and round at the bottom. Ironically, it is decidedly not the shape of small volumes of water that fall from clouds onto our umbrellas.
When I was about 19, I worked as an undergraduate research assistant in a geochemistry lab. I was in the copy room one day (because journal articles weren’t available online in those days) when a geophysics professor walked in. Presumably to make copies. He shouted at what I had to assume was me, because I was the only other person in the room, “WHAT SHAPE IS A RAINDROP!?!” (I recall him having a British accent, but that could be wrong.)
I looked around the room again, trying to find the unfortunate person he was shouting at before, finding no one, I responded… “What?”
“WHAT SHAPE IS A RAINDROP!?!”
“Erm…drop…shaped….?” I responded.
“DESCRIBE IT!”
I might have drawn it in the air, or I might have said, “Pointy at the top and round at the bottom?” before he said
“WRONG! WHY DOES EVERYONE THINK THAT!?!” (This was a rhetorical question.) “WHAT SHAPE IS A DROP OF WATER ON A COUNTERTOP!?!”
“round?”
“SPHERICAL!?!”
“I mean…”
“A RAINDROP FALLING THROUGH THE AIR ENCOUNTERS WIND RESISTANCE! IT’S SHAPED LIKE A HAMBURGER BUN!!!”
You may think I was alarmed, and the cortisol might be part of why I remember this interaction so clearly, but mystifying and startling experiences were pretty much par for the course for me as an undergrad at Georgia Tech. I can only assume the poor man had just graded an exam on which he thought he’d given a generous bonus question on precipitation geometry.
I am telling this story to say that a paper raindrop as a weather science craft project is adorable and we all love to hang it on the refrigerator and, also, it’s kind of the opposite of science education, because it introduces a misconception. In my case (and maybe also the students who had just disappointed that geophysics professor), a misconception that lasted indefinitely or until I was yelled at and bewildered by a frustrated scientist.
Why? Why do we do this? I will tell you what people tell me when I try to skip the cute stuff as I practice science with young children: Because children are too young for the truth. They won’t understand it. They’re “just kids” and they like smiling precipitation with pointy heads that distinguish them from smiling foods or sporting equipment. Do non-smiling raindrops scare children? Are children too young to see the actual shape of falling water droplets? Maybe it’s my own neurodivergence, but all of this is lost on me.
In my experience with actual children themselves, they enjoy being taken seriously. And they’ve seen raindrops before. Why do we teach things to children that are counter to their observations? Probably because that’s how it was taught to us. So often that when we’re yelled at in a copy room, we can’t even remember why we thought a raindrop would have a ridiculous pointy hat. We’ve certainly never seen water shaped like that, except maybe in the split second it is breaking off. of. a. faucet. But, honestly, we can’t see that. Here’s an awesome video that approximates the experience of falling water: https://youtu.be/kiZwDmQ0PmU I sort of want to make a smiling cloud with fishing line connected to blue construction paper shaped like wiggly hamburger buns.
The weather unit I propose for Practicing Science is about 5 chunks long. So I’m providing 5 weather/climate scientists to discuss or read about or trace pictures of or watch TED talks by or otherwise consider. The timing of the unit depends on how interested the various learners become and how many resources are followed. As of the moment of this writing, it’s all still being pushed out on instagram, but the lessons will be pieced together and posted on the lessons page at some point. Part 1 will be Energy in Water and will start with Evaporation. Part 2 will be Energy in Air and will start with Wind. Then, Energy transferring between water and wind (wind blowing water around, water driving wind). Part 4 will be clouds, and finally Storms (the reason kids start the weather unit in the first place). You can go backwards if you want.