General
| http://www.ems.psu.edu/~fraser/Meteo2 |
Meteo 2/3: Weather and Society
is a course offered by the Meteorology
Department
of the Pennsylvania State University
at University Park, Pennsylvania, U.S.A.
General
Non-PSU folk: if you are interested in using some of the resources employed in teaching this course in your own courses, see the note at the bottom of this page.
PSU Catalogue descriptions
Meteo 2/3 is offered in multiple sections during
both the Fall and Spring semesters as an basic course (primarily) to students
from outside of the meteorology major. The professor teaching the course changes
from one section to another and from one semseter to the next.
The material below will be updated when the course is next taught by Professor Fraser. He taught it last in Spring 2000
|
Specific
to Spring 2000
This page is specific to Section 4 of the course as it is being delivered during the Fall 1998 semester by Professor Fraser and is idiosyncratic to him.
Time & location: Section 4, Tuesday, Thursday
11:15-12:05, 112 Walker
Syllabus
This is an (incomplete) list of topics treated this semester.
What, when and how?
Book, office hours, auspicious dates, and grading policy.
Instructional resources: (available only when course is offered;
see alternative below)
Entitled, Basic Meteorology, these are the
resources employed by your insturctor in the classroom. They take the form of
text, diagrams, photographs, movie clips, interactive animations, and pedagogical
models which supplement the lecture and aid in communicating ideas. As these
resources are available on the Web, they are also available to the students
in PSU's public computer labs, the dormitory rooms, or even at home. Thus, students
have the full range of interactivity and help screens available to the professor
in class and can use them for study, review, and further exploration.
There are technical prices to pay for this accessibility and versatility. These are spelled out on the setup page (the links, below). Pay close attention to what it asks of you; don't even bother trying to branch into the resources themselves without having met the requirements. If you are on your own machine, this involves a one-time exercise of installing the proper browser and plugins. If you are on a PSU lab machine, we expect that most things will work from the beginning. In the past, many of the questions students asked of the instructor could have been avoided had they bothered to read and heed the instructions on the setup page. It is our intention that everything should work in the PSU labs.
Always enter Basic Meteorology through the setup page, even after you have installed the proper browser and plugins. It also serves to format the resources.
The instructional resources, are available at two sites. The primary site for these resources is
Anyone can use that site.
However, students at PSU will likely find a local mirror site to offer faster access. It is the intention that the local mirror will be available during those semesters in which the resources are being employed at Penn State University. Its address,
http://www.ems.psu.edu/~fraser/MeteoBasic
is the one employed in the heading above. Those who are not students, faculty or staff at Penn State University should use the primary site, but see the section below.
A note to those outside of Penn State University
The web resources for teaching meteorology are available to faculty and students at other non-profit educational institutions (such as, universities and high schools) for use in communicating the concepts behind our understanding of weather. Even though there is extensive material in place at present, there is much that still needs to be done, so it may be that a particular topic of interest to you will not be available.
The resources take the form of a classroom interface (which is modestly customizable to your own institution) for delivering the material in the classroom, and the content itself. There are two overlapping versions of these resources:
Each contains the same classroom interface, and visualizations, but Introductory Meteorology includes a mathematical treatment (sometimes interactive mathematics) of some of the topics and is intended for those in the physical sciences. Basic Meteorology, on the other hand, is intended as a survey for those who are not in the physical sciences.
If you are interested in using either of these resources in your own courses, please read the information on Copyright and permision.
You might also find my Bad Meteorology pages of use to you in preparing your own lectures.
