We agreed upon what air does as we saw what a heated balloon did in our classroom. As the heat affected the density of the air inside the balloon, the balloon/air rose, and as it transferred energy to the air around it, it became less dense and sank. This pattern repeats itself and is dependent upon the amount of energy that's absorbed by the ground cover.
We feel we've nailed down what's happening with the air. But the incoming clouds before a hail storm got us thinking about those specific clouds. We did some noticing with some images and a video Mrs. Brinza found, and annotated what's going on with the clouds as they form!
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We absolutely see the up-out-down movement of hailstorm clouds. And we know that it's warmer on days when it hails. This totally makes sense because if hailstorm clouds are as high as our research tells us, they need a lot of energy to get up as high as they do! But air isn't the only thing we need to consider. There's also high humidity when hail happens. Next steps: figuring out more about humidity!