Choosing a Periscope Patio Plan

Weather Beside the Periscopes

A science museum has an outdoor patio with periscopes. Visitors look through them to spot distant objects. The museum wants to add movable seats beside the exhibit. Staff members are comparing designs with shade canopies, wind screens, or open sides. They first gathered weather evidence to help judge the plans.

Step 1: Staff chose 12 observation dates spread through each season. They repeated this for two years, giving 24 dates per season. Dates were chosen before staff checked forecasts, so the records included different kinds of weather.

Step 2: On each date, staff recorded the temperature at 1 p.m. They used the same shaded thermometer in the same place. They rounded each reading to the nearest whole degree Fahrenheit and placed it in a temperature group.

Step 3: At the same time, staff read the patio's wind meter. They marked an afternoon as windy when the wind speed was 10 miles per hour or higher. The table and graph combine both years of observations. Staff did not record rain. The displays summarize the observed afternoons, not the weather during every hour of a season.