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Keep Warm on Everest

What kinds of clothes you should take with you on a trip to summit Mount Everest? Compare different materials and fabrics that are used in clothing to figure out which one would work best for winter camping and mountaineering. Which fabrics performs best in the cold, in both wet and dry conditions?

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Plan

  • Which types of fabric will you compare? Which fabrics do you think will keep you warmest? Driest?
  • How will you compare how different fabrics perform in cold temperatures when wet and when dry? How will you measure temperature changes?
  • What materials do you need for your experiment?
  • Will you do the activity at a winter camp, or on a cold winter day outside your meeting hall?
  • How will you make your groups?

Do

  • Work in your group to review and revise your plan of action.
  • Share your experiment plan with the Scouters.
  • Implement the plan to figure out which fabric performs better in cold in both wet and dry conditions.
  • Make sure you record the temperatures before and after the experiment so that you can compare the fabrics. It is best to try and keep the starting temperature about the same

Review

  • What do you know now that you did not know before?
  • What did you learn about different fabrics?
  • What did you learn from other group’s techniques? How would you change your own experiment?
  • What clothing will you choose for your next winter adventure?
  • How did your group work together?
  • What elements of STEM were in this Adventure? Science? Technology? Engineering? Mathematics?
  • What did you like about this adventure? What did you not like? How would you do it differently?

Keep it Simple

  • Fill three water bottles with water (don’t fill them all the way). Keep one out in the cold as your control and place the other two in socks. Use one cotton sock and one wool sock. Leave the water bottles outside in the cold. Check in on them occasionally. What’s the difference between the different bottles?

Take it Further

  • Staying warm is important for Scouts of all ages, so share what you’ve learned with another Section. Find a fun and creative way to teach a younger Section about how to stay warm when they’re outside in the cold!