Student Research Reports

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This Project was done in a collaborative manner between two schools from the Region Metropolitana (RM) of Chile: Villa Maria Academy (VMA) and Liceo Carmela Silva Donoso (LCSD), located in Las Condes and Ñuñoa respectively. A weather station was installed in both schools, which was equipped with two thermometers, a digital multi-day and a mercury thermometer. From each school, 8th grade students registered maximum and minimum air temperatures every six days for the 2015 fall-winter period. By comparing temperatures for both schools, it was determined a significant difference of 3.2°C in the maximum temperatures for the months May and June. It is worth mentioning that, historically, this period has been characterized by high levels of atmospheric pollution in the RM. Based on that, our hypothesis was that locally significant differences in the temperatures are related to the distribution of particulate matter PM10. To prove this hypothesis, we compared data from both schools. The data of atmospheric pollution belongs to the closest MACAM monitoring stations to each school: “Las Condes” (VMA) and “Parque O’Higgins” (LCSD). When both maximum temperatures and thermic amplitude were compared between both schools, they showed to be significantly different during the period May-June 2015. We concluded that these parameters affect the distribution of particulate matter PM10, therefore, the higher PM10 concentrations was found to be related with a higher/lower temperature as seen in the comparison between LCSD with VMA values.