It’s that time of year, ALMOST spring and the weather talks are coming more frequently.  I was happy to venture down to Sergeant Bluff-Luton Elementary and speak to the 2nd grade class this morning.   I was  here a couple years ago, and I was not disappointed again this time with some excellent listeners and awesome questions.  Here’s a picture of the talk with me and some of those very eager to learn 2nd graders. 

We talked about TV meteorology, how weather forms, the different seasons,  the forecast of snow tomorrow, and severe weather.  One tricky question that was asked was how salt helps ice cream form when it’s mixed with ice.  I did a little investigating, and found a complicated answer.  When you make ice cream from scratch at home, the cream, sugar, and ingredients go in the middle bucket but the salt is added to an outside bucket full of ice.  What happens is that the melting point of the ice lowers because of the salt (the salt breaks up the formation of ice crystals). As more salt is added, the ice tries to dissolve the salt and this causes the temperature to drop a little more…which is what you want because this helps to freeze the cream and ice cream ingredients in the middle.  Not so simple, is it?  Even meteorologists need a little science refresher course once in a while.

Dave Winslow

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