Put the kettle on to help weather scientists feel the pressure
30 March 2020
People at home in isolation can take part in a University of Reading science experiment this week simply by putting the kettle on.
Scientists in the University’s Department of Meteorology want as many people as possible to help them test whether the unusually high atmospheric pressure currently being experienced in the UK observably changes how long it takes to boil a kettle.
Those wanting to take part in the Inside Weather citizen science project just need to put exactly one litre (or 1,000 grams) of water into a prepared kettle today (Monday 30 March), following these instructions. They will need to repeat this three times, and will be asked to do the experiment again on a different day when the atmospheric pressure is much lower.
The results will allow scientists to compare the boiling times in high and low atmospheric pressure, to demonstrate if weather can really have an effect inside people’s homes.
Professor Andrew Charlton-Perez, Head of the Meteorology Department said: “We might all be stuck indoors at the moment, but the weather still affects us. Citizen Science activities from Reading Meteorology Department are helping to keep people in touch with the world around them.”
Professor Giles Harrison, atmospheric physicist at the University of Reading, who is leading the experiment, said: “High or low atmospheric pressure will only change the boiling temperature of water by about a degree, or a few seconds in the time it takes a kettle to boil. We found the contributions of many Citizen Scientists invaluable in finding small atmospheric changes during the 2015 eclipse, and to extract today’s small effect of the weather we need as many people as possible to take part.”
The current spell of high atmospheric pressure is due to dissipate on Tuesday (31 March) so readings should ideally be submitted today (Monday) or early tomorrow.
Full instructions to take part in the Inside Weather experiment can be found at https://rdg.ac/3bALasX
The experiment follows the launch of another University of Reading citizen science project named Rainfall Rescue.
This is asking volunteers to help digitise millions of rainfall records currently on paper documents, to allow scientists to better analyse them on computers, and help water companies test their systems against real historical floods and droughts to see if they could cope today.