How did clouds get their names?

Look at the picture - How are the names for the different cloud forms related to one another?

The study of clouds has always been a daydreamer’s science, aptly founded by a thoughtful young man whose favorite activity was staring out of the window at the sky. Richard Hamblyn tells the history of Luke Howard, the man who classified the clouds and forever changed humanity’s understanding of these changeable, mysterious objects.

The Naming of Clouds

On a cold December evening in 1802, a nervous young man named Luke Howard stood before the assembled members of a London science club about to give a lecture that would change his life and go on to change humanity's understanding of the skies.

Luke Howard was a pharmacist by profession, but he was a meteorologist by inclination, having been obsessed by clouds and weather since childhood. As a school boy, he spent hours staring out of the classroom window, gazing at the passing clouds. Like everyone else at the time, he had no idea how clouds formed, or how they stayed aloft. But he enjoyed observing their endless transformations.

By his own admission, Luke paid little attention to his lessons, but fortunately for the future of meteorology, he managed to pick up a good knowledge of Latin.

Compared to the other natural sciences, meteorology, the study of weather, was a late developer, mainly because weather is elusive. You can't snap off a piece of rainbow or a section of cloud for convenient study. You can, of course, collect rain water in calibrated containers, but all you really end up with are buckets of water.

Understanding clouds required a different approach, which is where Luke Howard's idea came in. His simple insight based on years of observation was that clouds have many individual shapes but they have few basic forms. In fact, all clouds belong to one of three principal types to which Howard gave the names: cirrus, Latin for tendril or hair; cumulus, heap or pile; and stratus, layer or sheet.

But that wasn't the clever part. Clouds are constantly changing, merging, rising, falling, and spreading throughout the atmosphere, rarely maintaining the same shapes for more than a few minutes. Any successful naming system had to accommodate this essential instability, as Howard realized.

So, in addition to the three main cloud types, he introduced a series of intermediate and compound types as a way of including the regular transitions that occur among clouds. A high, wispy cirrus cloud that descended and spread into a sheet was named cirrostratus, while groups of fluffy cumulus clouds that joined up and spread were named stratocumulus.

Howard identified seven cloud types, but these have since been expanded to ten, cloud nine being the towering cumulonimbus thunder cloud, which is probably why being on cloud nine means to be on top of the world.

Howard's classification had an immediate international impact. The German poet and scientist J. W. von Goethe wrote a series of poems in praise of Howard's clouds, which ended with the memorable lines:

"As clouds ascend, are folded, scatter, fall,
Let the world think of thee who taught it all,"

while Percy Shelley also wrote a poem, "The Cloud," in which each of Howard's seven cloud types was characterized in turn.

But perhaps the most impressive response to the naming of clouds was by the painter John Constable, who spent two summers on Hampstead Heath painting clouds in the open air.

Once they had been named and classified, clouds became easier to understand as the visible signs of otherwise invisible atmospheric processes. Clouds write a kind of journal on the sky that allows us to understand the circulating patterns of weather and climate.

Perhaps the most important breakthrough in understanding clouds was realizing that they are subject to the same physical laws as everything else on Earth. Clouds, for example, do not float, but fall slowly under the influence of gravity. Some of them stay aloft due to upward convection from the sun-heated ground, but most are in a state of slow, balletic descent.

"Clouds are the patron goddesses of idle fellows," as the Greek dramatist Aristophanes wrote in 420 B.C., and nephology, the study of clouds, remains a daydreamer's science, aptly founded by a thoughtful young man whose favorite activity was staring out of the window at the sky.

The names of the clouds were derived from which language?

A Latin

B Greek

C French

D German

 

Luke Howard's profession was:

A Meteorologist

B Teacher

C Pharmacist

D Clergyman

 

The name 'cirrus' means:

A Heap or pile

B Layer or sheet

C Light or pale

D Tendril or hair

 

Which famous poet wrote a poem called 'The Cloud':

A William Wordsworth

B Lord Byron

C Percy Shelley

D Henry W. Longfellow

 

The study of clouds is known as:

A Meteorology

B Cloudology

C Nephology

D Geology 

Pre-learn the vocab:

24 terms

Watch:

How clouds got their names

Short radio clip on Shelley's The Cloud

shaken     rest        showers     hail     sun     shade     again     thunder     streams

 

I bring fresh 1______ for the thirsting flowers,

From the seas and the 2______;

I bear light 3______ for the leaves when laid

In their noonday dreams.

From my wings are 4______ the dews that waken

The sweet buds every one,

When rocked to 5_____ on their mother's breast,

As she dances about the 6 ______.

I wield the flail of the lashing 7_____,

And whiten the green plains under,

And then 8______ I dissolve it in rain,

And laugh as I pass in 9______.

 

What or who is “I” in this poem?

 

What do these words mean?

Bear   noonday   dews    buds    wield    flail   lashing   

The Cloud

BY PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY

next verses...

...

I sift the snow on the mountains below,

And their great pines groan aghast;

And all the night 'tis my pillow white,

While I sleep in the arms of the blast.

Sublime on the towers of my skiey bowers,

Lightning my pilot sits;

In a cavern under is fettered the thunder,

It struggles and howls at fits;

Over earth and ocean, with gentle motion,

This pilot is guiding me,

Lured by the love of the genii that move

In the depths of the purple sea;

Over the rills, and the crags, and the hills,

Over the lakes and the plains,

Wherever he dream, under mountain or stream,

The Spirit he loves remains;

And I all the while bask in Heaven's blue smile,

Whilst he is dissolving in rains.

The sanguine Sunrise, with his meteor eyes,

And his burning plumes outspread,

Leaps on the back of my sailing rack,

When the morning star shines dead;

As on the jag of a mountain crag,

Which an earthquake rocks and swings,

An eagle alit one moment may sit

In the light of its golden wings.

And when Sunset may breathe, from the lit sea beneath,

Its ardours of rest and of love,

And the crimson pall of eve may fall

From the depth of Heaven above,

With wings folded I rest, on mine aëry nest,

As still as a brooding dove.

That orbèd maiden with white fire laden,

Whom mortals call the Moon,

Glides glimmering o'er my fleece-like floor,

By the midnight breezes strewn;

And wherever the beat of her unseen feet,

Which only the angels hear,

May have broken the woof of my tent's thin roof,

The stars peep behind her and peer;

And I laugh to see them whirl and flee,

Like a swarm of golden bees,

When I widen the rent in my wind-built tent,

Till calm the rivers, lakes, and seas,

Like strips of the sky fallen through me on high,

Are each paved with the moon and these.

I bind the Sun's throne with a burning zone,

And the Moon's with a girdle of pearl;

The volcanoes are dim, and the stars reel and swim,

When the whirlwinds my banner unfurl.

From cape to cape, with a bridge-like shape,

Over a torrent sea,

Sunbeam-proof, I hang like a roof,

The mountains its columns be.

The triumphal arch through which I march

With hurricane, fire, and snow,

When the Powers of the air are chained to my chair,

Is the million-coloured bow;

The sphere-fire above its soft colours wove,

While the moist Earth was laughing below.

I am the daughter of Earth and Water,

And the nursling of the Sky;

I pass through the pores of the ocean and shores;

I change, but I cannot die.

For after the rain when with never a stain

The pavilion of Heaven is bare,

And the winds and sunbeams with their convex gleams

Build up the blue dome of air,

I silently laugh at my own cenotaph,

And out of the caverns of rain,

Like a child from the womb, like a ghost from the tomb,

I arise and unbuild it again.

The Math Behind Van Gogh's "Starry Night"

What is the visual phenomenon the painter is trying to convey?

Why not just take a photograph?

This is one of the most popular and famous paintings in the world. Why?

Physicist Werner Heisenberg said, “When I meet God, I am going to ask him two questions: why relativity? And why turbulence? I really believe he will have an answer for the first.” As difficult as turbulence is to understand mathematically, we can use art to depict the way it looks. Natalya St. Clair illustrates how Van Gogh captured this deep mystery of movement, fluid and light in his work.

Lead in

Try to represent the following things in six simple drawings:

 

Water flowing

Smoke

Clouds and mist

Fire

Reflections on a shiny surface

oil

 

What kinds of lines are used to represent these forms?

 

 

 

Lead in: What do you think makes this picture so well loved?

Look at the title:

“The unexpected math behind Van Gogh’s ‘Starry Night’ by Natalya St. Clair:

What do you think the article will say about the picture?

 

Read the article and find out:

One of the most remarkable aspects of the human brain is its ability to recognize patterns and describe them. Among the hardest patterns we’ve tried to understand is the concept of turbulent flow in fluid dynamics.

The German physicist Werner Heisenberg said, “When I meet God, I’m going to ask him two questions: why relativity and why turbulence? I really believe he will have an answer for the first.”

As difficult as turbulence is to understand mathematically, we can use art to depict the way it looks.

In June 1889, Vincent van Gogh painted the view just before sunrise from the window of his room at the Saint-Paul-de-Mausole asylum in Saint-Rémy-de-Provence, where he’d admitted himself after mutilating his own ear in a psychotic episode.

In “The Starry Night,” his circular brushstrokes create a night sky filled with swirling clouds and eddies of stars.

Van Gogh and other Impressionists represented light in a different way than their predecessors, seeming to capture its motion, for instance, across sun-dappled waters, or here in starlight that twinkles and melts through milky waves of blue night sky.

The effect is caused by luminance, the intensity of the light in the colors on the canvas.

The more primitive part of our visual cortex, which sees light contrast and motion but not color, will blend two differently colored areas together if they have the same luminance.

But our brain’s primate subdivision will see the contrasting colors without blending.

With these two interpretations happening at once, the light in many Impressionist works seems to pulse, flicker, and radiate oddly.

That’s how this and other Impressionist works use quickly executed, prominent brushstrokes to capture something strikingly real about how light moves.

Sixty years later, Russian mathematician Andrey Kolmogorov furthered our mathematical understanding of turbulence when he proposed that energy in a turbulent fluid at length R varies in proportion to the five-thirds power of R.

Experimental measurements show Kolmogorov was remarkably close to the way turbulent flow works, although a complete description of turbulence remains one of the unsolved problems in physics.

A turbulent flow is self-similar if there is an energy cascade.

In other words, big eddies transfer their energy to smaller eddies, which do likewise at other scales.

Examples of this include Jupiter’s Great Red Spot, cloud formations, and interstellar dust particles.

In 2004, using the Hubble Space Telescope, scientists saw the eddies of a distant cloud of dust and gas around a star, and it reminded them of Van Gogh’s “Starry Night.”

This motivated scientists from Mexico, Spain, and England to study the luminance in Van Gogh’s paintings in detail.

They discovered that there is a distinct pattern of turbulent fluid structures close to Kolmogorov’s equation hidden in many of Van Gogh’s paintings.

The researchers digitized the paintings and measured how brightness varies between any two pixels.

From the curves measured for pixel separations, they concluded that paintings from Van Gogh’s period of psychotic agitation behave remarkably similar to fluid turbulence.

His self-portrait with a pipe, from a calmer period in Van Gogh’s life, showed no sign of this correspondence.

And neither did other artists’ work that seemed equally turbulent at first glance, like Munch’s “The Scream.”

While it’s too easy to say Van Gogh’s turbulent genius enabled him to depict turbulence, it’s also far too difficult to accurately express the rousing beauty of the fact that, in a period of intense suffering, Van Gogh was somehow able to perceive and represent one of the most supremely difficult concepts nature has ever brought before mankind, and to unite his unique mind’s eye with the deepest mysteries of movement, fluid, and light.

 

Go to Ted Lesson:

The math behind Van Gogh's "Starry Night"

1. Who admitted van Gogh to a mental asylum?

2. What is an energy cascade?

3. What is turbulence?

4. What is relativity?

5. What is the Hubble telescope?

6. What is amazing about van Gogh's 1889 Starry Night painting?

Discuss

1. Is it important that Van Gogh seems to have accidentally represented turbulence? Why?

2. If we can just take photographs or films of fluid things, why bother trying to represent them through painting or drawing? 

Descension

1. One key ability of the human brain is recognizing _________ and being able to describe them.
2. Among the most difficult patterns scientists study is ________ in ________ dynamics.
3. The physicist _________ once said he would ask God about _________ and _________.
4. In June 1889, _________ created a painting based on the view from his room in an asylum in _________.
5. In The Starry Night, _________ brushstrokes form a sky full of swirling _________ and starry eddies.
6. Impressionist artists showed _________ in a new way, capturing its _________ in scenes like water or the night sky.
7. This visual effect comes from _________, meaning the intensity of _________ in the colors used.
8. In 1941, _________ suggested that energy in turbulent flow depends on the _________ power of length.
9. In turbulent flow, an _________ cascade occurs, where larger eddies pass energy to _________ ones.
10. Researchers later found that the luminance patterns in Van Gogh’s paintings resemble _________, especially during times of _________ agitation.

Hannah Gadsby: Nanette | The Sunflowers

lead in:


Who painted this?

If I give you "unsolicited" advice, does it mean the advice is...
A) poorly researched?
B) unasked for?
C) not from a lawyer?
D) not advice that I follow myself?

Discuss

1. Should people who suffer from mental illness take medication or try to cope without it?

2. Is there a connection between artistic talent and mental instability?

3. How might the medication van Gogh was taking have actually been partly responsible for the Sunflowers?


Guide questions

1. According to the man, why should artists not take medication for mental health problems?


Kahoot Quiz

The Math of Starry Night

Colour

What colour do you think of?

Sensitive

Earthy and serious

Neutral

Passionate

Creative and natural

Serious and professional

Practical and on the move

Open and positive

Helpful and kind

Creative and nerdy

Pure and innocent

Confident and passionate

Independent and a bit rebellious

Fun and sporty

Why?

 

 

1. What overall trends do you notice in car colour popularity over time?

2.  Around which years do grey, black, and white cars start to dominate?

3. Which colour shows the fastest growth, and which declines the most?

4. Are there any surprising changes or spikes in the data?

5. What do you think explains these choices? Do you think practicality (e.g., resale value, maintenance) has anything to do with it?

6. What colour is your car, and why did you choose it?

7.  If you were 

Name that colour quiz

sick     angry      sleep      awake       sensitive      passion     neutral       mental       change    slow     fast

embarrassing     sadness     positive       kindness       innocent       powerful      love      deep      alon

caring      intelligent     neutral     passionate     courageous     independent     creative      analytical

serious       jokey       thoughtful        generous       warm-hearted      shy       extraverted      introverted

Colour oracle

What words does this remind you of?

Think of six things that are naturally blue. You can't say "sky"or "sea".

1

2

3

4

5

6

What colours can you see on this dress?

What colours are you wearing today? Why?

colour idioms

choose the correct word

out of the blue/red  (unexpectedly)

Q: Which of these events have occurred out of the blue?

Covid

World War II

9/11

The "discovery" of the American Continent by Christopher Columbus

The sinking of the Titanic

pink/green with envy     (jealous)

Is anyone jealous of you for any reason? Why?

purple/orange with rage    (angry)

get caught red/black handed    (guilty)

to have green/white thumbs       (good at gardening)

What makes you go purple with rage?

Do you have green thumbs?

Have you ever tried "shop-lifting"? Why? Why not? Did you get away with it?

  a white/blue lie      (small lie told to be polite or kid)

Tell each other some good reasons to tell white lies.

once in a red/blue moon       (not often at all)

Think about 

something you and your family do once in a blue moon

something that you almost never say or do, but just sometimes you do

to get the green/red light     (to be given permission)

Who gave you the green light to come to NZ?






What colour goes with these noun-adjectives for colour?

ocean

forest

lemon

royal

emerald

sapphire

sky

pitch

dirt

fire-engine

battleship

eggshell

snowy

stark

hot

Speaking:


You have ten characters in a play. They're personality and attitude is expressed in the following statements. What colour will their costume be?

1. Andy: I'm positive, open and lively.
2. Anna: I need my own space. I'm gentle but fragile.
3. Sharon: Don't tell me what to do. I'm my own boss.
4. Gus: I hear what you're saying but I don't want to be involved. I'm not really interested in people.
5. Brian: I'm a person in authority. Behave yourselves.
6. Patricia: I'm royalty. Obey me!
7. Angela: I'm caring and warm. Others are more important for me.
8. Susan: I'm creative yet analytical. I'm nerdy, but original.
9. Arthur: I'm passionate. Love me!
10. David: I'm often in a bit of a hurry, I hate to stand around all day. Please let me through.


Here are ten colours / shades:

1. Dark blue
2. Light blue
3. Orange
4. Red
5. Yellow
6. Grey
7. White
8. Purple
9. Peach
10. Black

Extension: which of these characters will get on well together? Which won't?

What does the diagram show?

Colour Hierarchy Diagram (after Berlin and Kay 1969)

Answer:

The diagram above works from left to right (following the arrows and plus signs). If a language has a particular colour word then it will also have all the colour words to the left of that word. So if a language has a word for blue, then it will also have words for yellow, green, red, black and white. The diagram also indicates that if a language has a word for say pink, then it may, or may not, have a word for purple, but it will have colour words for brown, blue etc.

Why is this?

Watch:
 
The mystery of Blue

Questions:

1. Which famous book about the sea never mentions the colour blue?
2. Which colours would be the first (and last) to be named in ancient languages? Why?

red turquoise black blue white yellow green orange violet

3. Which culture was one of the first to produce a blue dye?
4. How could you test whether or not someone can see a colour?
5.  "Without a word for a colour you may find it difficult to see it”. Do you think this is true?

Discussion:

According to the video, is there some connection between a culture manufacturing colour and "naming" it?
What example was given of this?

C.S Lewis (author of the Narnia series)

"in order to see precisely what something is, you first need to have a vague idea of what it is."

Is the same thing true of the other senses - hearing?

Which sense to you trust most?

SIGHT       HEARING      SMELL      TASTE     TOUCH

How do you check that you're not dreaming?

Does Davidoff's test prove that having a word for a colour might help us to see it? 

We use the expressions "eye-opening experience" or "to open someone's eyes" to mean a person or film or book or journey etc that really made you to see a whole new world. 

Has anyone (or anything) really opened your eyes (or your mind) before?

Create the correct FORM of the word and then check below:

In 'The Odyssey,' Greek poet Homer   FAME    describes the 'wine-dark sea.'

In 1858 William Gladstone, who later became the British prime minister, counted the colour    REFER       in the Homer's Odyssey and found blue wasn't mentioned at all. Black is mentioned NEAR    200 times and white about 100. Red,    WHILE    , is mentioned    FEW   than 15 times, and yellow and green fewer than 10.

It wasn't just the Greeks. Blue also doesn't appear in the Koran, ancient Chinese stories, and an ancient Hebrew version of the Bible,    ACCORD   to a German philologist named Lazarus Geiger.

Check

In 'The Odyssey,' Greek poet Homer famously describes the 'wine-dark sea.'

In 1858 William Gladstone, who later became the British prime minister, counted the colour references in the Homer's Odyssey and found blue wasn't mentioned at all. Black is mentioned nearly 200 times and white about 100. Red, meanwhile, is mentioned fewer than 15 times, and yellow and green fewer than 10.

It wasn't just the Greeks. Blue also doesn't appear in the Koran, ancient Chinese stories, and an ancient Hebrew version of the Bible, according to a German philologist named Lazarus Geiger.

Look at this diagram. What do you think it illustrates?

The surprising pattern behind color names around the world




1. How many colour categories do we have in English?

2. How did anthropologists used to believe colour terms were chosen by cultures?

3. What did the research in 1969 suggest about how colour terms develop in a language?

4. What did William Gladstone notice about Homer's use of colour terms?

4. How do languages with only a few colour terms describe colours that don't have terms?

5. How is colour expressed in Hanuno'o?

6. Why might a word for "red" be formulated before a word for "blue"?

7. What have researchers discovered about colours themselves?





Where would you place these colours in the Hanuno'o spectrum?

Black, dark blue, light blue, purple, orange, white, grey, silver, gold, light green, dark green, pink, red, yellow....

More:

Further reading