In this activity, students face an engineering challenge based on real-world applications. They are tasked with developing a tool they can use to measure the amount of rain that falls each day. Students will find out why freshwater is important,... (View More) learn about the water cycle, and the need to have a standard form of calibration for measurement tools. They will learn that keeping track of precipitation is important, and learn a little bit about how NASA's GPM satellite measures precipitation from space. This lesson uses the 5-E instructional model. (View Less)

This short video (4:44) helps audiences understand and appreciate the importance of measuring precipitation globally. The role of the Global Precipitation Measurement (GPM) mission to better understand, model and predict where and when too much... (View More) rainfall will occur (resulting in floods and landslides) and where too little rain will fall (resulting in droughts) is examined. (View Less)