VGCC Instructor starts Lecture Series talking about the Weather
This winter’s weather served as a teaching tool as Vance-Granville Community College’s Arts and Sciences division kicked off its series of lectures under the umbrella title, “Earth’s Energy and Wave Motion: Harmony and Disharmony in Our Relationship with Nature and with Each Other.” The first lecture, called “Middle Latitude Wave Cyclone, the Jet Stream and this Winter’s Unusual Weather,” was presented by Bill Tucci, who teaches math and physics at VGCC. The presentation was held in the VGCC Civic Center on March 2, which happened to fall during Severe Weather Awareness Week in North Carolina.
Tucci discussed the basic patterns of not only severe but ordinary weather in North America, which are influenced by the wave cyclones formed by low pressure areas in the atmosphere. “I thought about this topic for a lecture because it’s relevant to our daily lives,” Tucci said, “and because I’ve been complaining all winter about how cold it is.” He said that this winter’s weather has been extreme across the country, even in San Francisco, which recorded its first snowfall since 1976. Tucci explained that the kinds of temperatures and storms we have faced have led some to doubt climate change, but there is a distinction between “weather” (which refers to conditions at a particular place over a short period of time) and “climate” (which is a generalization over a longer period of time, such as centuries). Tucci said that the Jet Stream took a different route this year, and Americans have recently experienced greater contrasts between hot and cold weather. “Globally, the period of June 2009 through May 2010 was the hottest twelve months on record,” Tucci reported. He talked about the meaning of warm and cold “fronts” and demonstrated how such fronts behave, using a container with warm and cold water as a model. Like cold air, cold water is denser than warm water, and therefore, it sinks below the warm water. Those in attendance for the lecture left with some more insight into terminology used by TV meteorologists. “Predicting the weather is difficult, but we’ve gotten better at it in recent years,” Tucci said.
The lecture series continues with presentations by English instructor David Wyche on surfing, on Wednesday, March 23; Spanish instructor Matthew Nielsen, on our responses to extraordinary waves in nature, on Wednesday, April 13; and music instructor Michael Stephenson on “Harmony and Discord in the Music and Personal Lives of the Beatles,” on Wednesday, April 27. All begin at 1 p.m. in the VGCC Civic Center and are open to the public. For more information on these lectures, call VGCC instructor Joshua McKaughan at (252) 738-3464.
Above: VGCC instructor Bill Tucci pours warm water (colored red) after pouring cold water (colored blue) into a container demonstrating how masses of warm and cold air behave. (VGCC photo)
