Other Project Suggestions

  1. Students can research the Solar Cycle prior to the 1700's. The records during the 1600's show very little evidence of sunspot numbers.This was also the time when Europe experienced the 'Little Ice Age'. Further research will indicate that when there was little solar activity, some parts of the Earth experienced unusually cold climate periods.
  2. Students can explore the correlation of the sunspot cycle and the amount of carbon-14 in tree rings. An inverse relationship with time should be discovered.
  3. Students can research a possible correlation of solar activity, sunspot numbers, and CmEs with the El Nino phenomenon.
  4. Students can research the movement of the South Magnetic Pole and the Aurora Australis.
  5. Students can investigate the flip-flop of the polarity of the Earth's magnetic poles over the last 1O million years.
  6. Students can locate and present magazine articles or web sites relating solar storms to resulting human impacts.
  7. Students can visit the Mount Wilson Observatory web site and continue the investigation of the activity cycles of other stars, and see if any patterns exist with the temperature of the star, its spectral type or other properties of the stars.
  8. Visit the Mauna Kea Solar Observatory web site and examine their catalog of CMEs on the sun since 1980. Compare the known times of CMEs against the recordings of the Canadian magnetic observatory network to see how often CMEs result in geomagnetic storms.
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