Fog formation, smog situations and air quality in high school physicseducation

It has become a worldwide expectation that the physicscurriculum includes everyday knowledge as well. One important field that canmake the curriculum more colourful and exciting is the field of meteorology.In our paper, a three-lesson-long curriculum for high schools will bepresented on how to teach the connection between fog formation and airquality. The international educational experience of this particular topicwill be surveyed, mainly in the countries of the Carpathian Basin, moreover,the measurement processes and education methods used in the GLOBE Programwill also be presented. The experimental curriculum consists of three parts.In the first part air humidity and the concepts of absolute and relativehumidity are discussed. Through a few specific exercises, the studentsparticipating in the program learn to specify relative humidity and becomeacquainted with fog formation. It is shown via an experiment that aircooling at a saturated state is not enough to form fog becausecondensational nuclei are needed for the formation of tiny water drops. In the 2nd lesson, the concept of temperature inversion and its connectionto fog and air pollution are discussed. Using Internet websites the studentscollect information about the formation of smog, its types, occurrence, andthe conditions for declaring smog alerts. In the 3rd lesson, the methods of air pollution analysis and different airpollutants are discussed. Websites, where the students can follow the airpollution data of their area, are used. Based on these, problems related tothe interpretation of the data will be solved. The information which isavailable on the website of the European Environment Agency is also touchedon.