The 1815 volcanic eruption of Mount Tambora changed history. The year following the eruption, 1816 was known in England as the “Year without a Summer,” in New England as “18-hundred-and-froze-to-death”, and “L’annee de la misere” or “Das Hungerhjar” in Switzerland. Germans dubbed 1817 as “the year of the beggar.” The Chinese and Indians had no name for it but the years following the massive eruption were remembered as ones of intense and widespread suffering. Scientists are, only today, uncovering the historical impacts of this ecological disaster. Suddenly we have climatic data which have reshaped our understanding of the events of 1815 and the years that followed. Now it is historians’ job to explore the social, political, and cultural influence of this catastrophic event. All this and more today as we explore the eruption of Mount Tambora in April 1815.
Listen, download, watch on YouTube, or scroll down for the transcript.
Other Episodes of Interest:
Transcript of Mount Tambora and the Year Without a Summer
Researched and written by Marissa Rhodes
Produced by Marissa Rhodes and Averill Earls, PhD
Marissa: In 2004, Icelandic volcanologist Haraldur Sigurdsson was visiting Sumbawa, a medium-sized island in the Indonesian archipelago. The Sumbawa savannahs are ideally suited to the breeding of horses and cows. Its population, around 1.4 million people, work primarily in agriculture and mining. One of Sigurdsson’s local guides informed him of a small gully where locals had found old pottery and other goods. They called it “museum gully” and knew nothing more of it. They might have been surprised when Sigurdsson enthusiastically asked them to take him there.
Averill: The guides took Sigurdsson to museum gully. Using ground-penetrating radar, he and his team from the University of Rhode Island, uncovered the remains of a 19th century village frozen in time. They excavated one structure, a home which contained the carbonized remains of two people. The woman brandished a utility knife as if she was in the course of preparing a meal or performing an ordinary task around the house. The couple was surrounded by their belongings: furniture, iron tools, bronze bowls and pottery. Sigurdsson knew that this site had been preserved by history’s deadliest volcano, Mount Tambora, whose 1815 eruption changed history.
Marissa: The locals on Sumbawa knew little of this event which had occurred only 200 years ago on the island they call home. This is not, of course, because they were uneducated or disinterested. They knew nothing of the eruption because few who lived on the island, and no one who lived on the mountain at the time survived to tell the story. The Tambora people and their Rajah lived closest to the volcano before the eruption. One April evening, their culture, their language, and their lifestyle, became extinct within a matter of hours. The rest of the world was oblivious to the eruption for months. Even after news of the event reached the rest of the globe, they had no idea that they were already weathering its impact.
The year following the eruption, 1816 was known in England as the “Year without a Summer,” in New England as 18-hundred-and-froze-to-death, and “L’annee de la misere” or “Das Hungerhjar” in Switzerland. Germans dubbed 1817 as “the year of the beggar.” The Chinese and Indians had no name for it but the years following the massive eruption were remembered as ones of intense and widespread suffering. Scientists are, only today, uncovering the historical impacts of this ecological disaster. Suddenly we have climatic data which have reshaped our understanding of the events of 1815 and the years that followed. Now it is historians’ job to explore the social, political, and cultural influence of this catastrophic event. All this and more today as we explore the eruption of Mount Tambora in April 1815.
I’m Marissa Rhodes
And I’m Averill Earls
And we are your historians for this episode of Dig.
Averill: In the beginning of the 19th century, Mount Tambora had been considered extinct. No one alive at the time knew of any Tambora eruptions since the start of recorded history. We know now that before 1815, Mount Tambora had not erupted for over 5,000 years. Starting sometime in 1812, the villagers living on the mountain’s terraces and at its foot reported hearing occasional rumbling and seeing small eruptions of steam. These developments were interesting to the inhabitants of the mountain who spoke a now-extinct language related to Khmer, the language of Cambodia. They probably discussed it amongst themselves and with the traders and guides from the British and Dutch East India Companies who occasionally docked in Sumbawa’s primary port, called Bima. No one seemed particularly worried about Tambora’s awakening.
Marissa: This was, until April 5, 1815. A loud explosion was heard up to 620 miles away (1,000 km). A 15 mile-high column of hot ash and smoke shot out of the massive volcano. Over 10,000 residents were killed immediately in this initial eruption. Two entire principalities, Tambora, and Pekat had been vaporized. Others close by choked on poisonous gases or were buried in ash and pumice, where they stayed until American students began excavating their resting places 200 years later. On April 10, the volcano erupted again, this time the column of ash and fire thrown from the volcano reached 25 miles high. This second explosion was heard over 1,500 miles away in Sumatra. The entire top of the mountain, totaling about a mile high, was blown off entirely, changing Mount Tambora’s appearance forever. Much of the archipelago and its adjacent seas were plunged into darkness for days. Volcanic ash reached as far as 620 miles away from the site.
Averill: The Rajah of Sangarr, a small principality on Sumbawa survived the disaster and described the site of the eruption for posterity:
“[T]hree distinct columns of flame burst forth, near the top of Tomboro [sic] Mountain, all of them apparently within the verge of the crater; and after ascending separately to a very great height, their tops united in the air in a troubled confused manner. In a short time the whole mountain next [to] Saugar [sic] appeared like a body of liquid fire extending itself in every direction… Between nine and ten p.m. ashes began to fall, and soon after a violent whirlwind ensued, which blew down nearly every house in the village of Saugar, carrying the tops and light parts along with it… In the part of Saugar adjoining [Mount Tambora] its effects were much more violent, tearing up by the roots the largest trees and carrying them into the air together with men, houses, cattle, and whatever else came within its influence. This will account for the immense number of floating trees seen at sea… The sea rose nearly twelve feet higher than it had ever been known to be before, and completely spoiled the only small spots of rice lands in Saugar, sweeping away houses and every thing within its reach.”
Marissa: The Sumbawa people who did not die in either eruption suffered in the following weeks. They endured transplantation or homelessness as hot rivers of lava flowed over their villages. Thousands drowned in resultant tsunamis or suffered fatal injuries in volcanic wind gales. Tens of thousands died from thirst, hunger, disease or malnutrition over the following months because their rice crops and infrastructure were destroyed. Their water supply was also poisoned by ash, pyroclastic flows and the aerosolized gases it absorbed. Two weeks after the eruption, Lieutenant Owen Phillips was charged with delivering rice and drinking water to the island from stores on Java. He encountered a horrible scene. Few recognizable built structures still existed on the island and both land and sea were littered with uprooted trees and rotting corpses. [Philips was actually the person who recorded the Rajah’s eyewitness account we just read]
Averill: An estimated 117,000 people died as a direct result of the two April eruptions. Survivors who lived on the farther reaches of the island appeared to have emigrated en masse in the eruption’s aftermath. The islanders reached such depths of desperation that they started selling themselves as slaves to Sulawesi [SU-la-WEY-see] pirates as a survival strategy. Within a year of the event, half of Sumbawa’s population were dead or departed. Only years later did new groups arrive to repopulate and rebuild the island. Nearly all of Sumbawa’s buildings date to after 1815. At least two small kingdoms were lost entirely and we know very little about them. The Dutch and British East India companies, whose activities generated most if the documents we have about 19th-century Indonesia, knew little of the Tambora or Pekat people. Neither company had been successful at regulating trade in Sumbawa and other small islands in the archipelago by that time.
Marissa: The Dutch had been in Indonesia since 1603 but focused their efforts on Java which was closer to the mainland. Sailors had used Mount Tambora as a landmark and guide in their journeys but their contact with the people on Sumbawa was minimal compared to interactions in the bustling ports of Java. The nearby islands of Lombok, Bali and East Java suffered considerable crop damage after the eruption but news of their struggles did not travel far. Unlike the explosion of Krakatoa in the 1880s, this eruption went largely unreported. The telegraph had not yet been invented and the volcano’s immediate damage was confined to the lesser colonized islands which were still comparatively insular.
Averill: What’s more is that until the eruption of Krakatoa (70 years later), scientists were unsure of the climatic impact of volcanic eruptions. For this reason, studies on Tambora and its impacts are all fairly recent. First-hand documentation of its 1815 eruption are incredibly rare so its death toll, and its immediate consequences went undetermined for decades. Most of the accounts we have from the time are the recorded observations of British and Dutch sailors in the area. In the last few years, scientists are beginning to understand that the deposits of ash, pumice and solidified lava flows have completely reshaped the island’s topography. The Mount Tambora eruption has long since been identified as the cause of the “Year without a Summer” but in 1816, few people had any idea that such a cataclysmic event had passed and no one knew that it would wreak havoc all over the world for the next three years.
Marissa: First I want to make sure we give our listeners an idea of the scale of this eruption. Krakatoa, which is often used as an example of the quintessential natural disaster, flung 4.5 cubic miles of pumice, rock, ash and other debris into the atmosphere, no small amount. But when Mount Tambora erupted, it expelled 36 cubic miles of debris into the atmosphere. There’s no comparison. Those of us who have seen Dante’s Peak, starring Pierce Brosnan and Linda Hamilton, might remember it was about the 1980 eruption of Mount St. Helen’s in Washington state. Tambora’s eruption was 100 times the size of the eruption of Mount St. Helen’s. It’s nearly impossible to imagine the scale of this disaster, really. When something is so massive and devastating, it almost starts to mean nothing… just numbers, right?
Averill: One way we can measure Tambora’s destructiveness is by exploring its impact over the rest of the world in the following years. But keep in mind, at the time, no one knew that this eruption was to blame for the events that followed. The ash thrown up into the atmosphere by the violent explosion settled over the entire archipelago, blotting out the light for days after the event. This consequence was obviously perceived by people who were living at the time but what they could not have known was that the volcano had emitted 80 megatons (80 million metric tons) of sulphur dioxide which rose into the stratosphere, creating a band around the tropics. There, they oxidized into sulphate aerosol particles which were distributed globally over the next year. These aerosols were deposited on the ice covering both of the Earth’s poles, and these deposits continued for two years. Tambora’s emissions were preserved in ice, appearing as they did in the months after the eruption, and studied in ice cores extracted in 2009.
Marissa: These sulphate particles refract and absorb the sun’s light in such a way that it leads to a cooling effect on the ground. The world’s temperatures plummeted for the next 3 years. This, in addition to other weather anomalies triggered by the eruption, disrupted ecosystems all over the planet. I think we talked about proxies in the Little Ice Age episode? But a quick refresh: proxies are records of historical temperatures that still exist today. Scientists have used ice cores as we mentioned earlier, historical documentation by cultures all over the world, as well as dendrochronology — the reading of tree rings– to determine temperature patterns after the eruption. Being historians, we’re most interested in the document proxies, and to be honest, we’re hardly qualified to talk about the other more scientific ways of studying this phenomenon. You need to go over to Lady Science Pod for that.
Averill: In North America and Europe, 19th-century people had a nerdy habit of recording the temperature and other meteorological data every day. Thomas Jefferson was one of these nerds. Scholars have been able to use his records to prove Tambora’s impact on global temperatures. For example, on May 17, 1816, Jefferson wrote:
“[T]he spring has been unusually dry and cold. our average morning cold for the month of May in other years has been 63° of Farenheit. in the present month it has been to this day an average of 53° and one morning as low as 43°. repeated frosts have killed the early fruits and the crops of tobacco and wheat will be poor.” [Jefferson to David Baillie Warden, May 17, 1816, in PTJ:RS, 10:65.]
Two months later, New England experienced a summer snow storm that dropped 10 inches of snow on unsuspecting villages. Now just one document like this doesn’t mean much, but added to hundreds of other documents where people similarly record plummeting temperatures, they act as evidence that Tambora’s impact was far-reaching.
Marissa: The gazettes in Qing China reported the daily weather in enough detail that scholars have been able to measure Tambora’s impact on China’s weather between 1815 and 1819. They have also been able to use people’s personal diaries, etc to corroborate temperatures. During these years, China suffered from unseasonably cool and wet weather. Summer frosts and snow falls destroyed rice and buckwheat crops on such a scale that some areas, such as the southwestern Yunnan province, suffered severe famine. The Great Yunnan famine was the result of 3 successive crop failures. It was so severe that people were reportedly selling their children, committing murder-suicides, and eating clay in desperation.
Averill: Starvation and desperation in Yunnan killed many people. The survivors of the Yunnan famine were understandably scarred and resentful, and they sought ways to protect themselves from another such disaster. One way they did this was by turning to cash crops, specifically poppy. Poppy plants, used to produce opium, were hardy enough to withstand the temperature fluctuations resulting from Tambora. Even though they didn’t provide sustenance to those who grew them, they brought in cash which solved Yunnan’s food insecurity crisis at least temporarily. Farmers weren’t the only ones benefiting from this transition to cash crops. The state benefited as well because it was able to tax the lucrative crop and extract impressive revenue.
Marissa: What seemed like an innovative solution to famine at the time ended up having grave consequences. The famine contributed to the decline of the Qing dynasty and unfortunately coincided with the arrival of Western gun boats. Great Britain launched a strategy of gunboat diplomacy where it used intimidation in Chinese ports to force trade deals which unilaterally benefited them. Meanwhile, the opium problem worsened. Neither the farmers nor the state had any monetary incentive to stop growing poppy. Eventually the Yunnan province was entirely dedicated to the cultivation of poppy and was forced to import all of its grain from southeast Asia. So Yunnan was not producing any food at all… so much for increased food security! The opium-dependent population living in China’s ports bought foreign opium supplies in massive quantities which drained China of its silver (triggering the first and second Opium wars with Britain). It also created generations of Chinese people who struggled their entire lives with opium addiction. The Chinese state recognized widespread opium addiction as a national crisis as early as the 1830s.
Averill: This course of events is known in Chinese history as the Daoguang Depression. It was crucial to shaping China’s interactions with the West. In centuries past, China had enjoyed economic stability, population growth and competent, widespread political influence. Tambora’s impact on the climate made the Chinese vulnerable to Western exploitation and interference. This set China on a path toward deterioration: the decline of the Qing, the Opium Wars, and the Taiping Rebellion followed.
Marissa: Some of the modern world’s most dangerous pathogens also owe their strength to Tambora’s eruption. India’s monsoons were delayed in 1816 and 1817 by Tambora’s sulphate gases. The dramatic alteration in moisture content in Indian towns and cities resulted in a mutation to the cholera bacterium. This mutation triggered the deadliest cholera epidemic in history, known as the Bengal Cholera. In November 1817, this mutated cholera killed 5,000 people in 5 days. The disease quickly spread and became a pandemic lasting, in Asia, until 1821. Death tolls are staggeringly high and a total has never been calculated. We know 10,000 British soldiers stationed in India died of cholera but estimates of Indian deaths are projected to be in the hundreds of thousands. The bacterium did not become any less deadly as it traveled across Asia. Bangkok, for example, reported 30,000 cholera deaths. By 1823, the mutated strain reached Europe, and then North America shortly after. Worldwide, experts estimate that the cholera pandemic triggered by Tambora’s gases killed millions.
Averill: For centuries India has been regarded as the “Homeland of Cholera.” Public health officials and sometimes even historians accused the Indian government of neglecting sanitation, and the Indian people of unhygienic practices which transformed the country into a vector of the highly contagious disease. The British Empire used India’s susceptibility to cholera to justify their colonial activities there. The British were able to frame India as a third-world country incapable of ruling itself and Britain as the modern, civilized world power willing to influence the Indian state for the better. (Gandhi disagrees lol) The impact of British colonialism in India is still being felt today. Studies of Tambora’s impact have rectified this myth somewhat. There was little that India could have done to prevent the mutation and spread of the cholera bacteria in light of the monsoon failures they endured.
Marissa: Another indirect impact of Tambora are the riots that ensued across the globe in response to widespread famine and disease. In most modern societies, it’s not as easy to see the connections between agricultural output and food security. But at the time of Tambora’s eruption, the vast majority of the world was still engaged in subsistence agriculture. So variations in agricultural output had direct impacts on how much food made it to the table. One crop failure was serious. Two crop failures in a row was dire. Most regions would have used any food stores to supplement the first failure. Three crop failures in a row, as we saw with Hunnan province in China, was an emergency. Gillen D’Arcy Wood, author on a new book about Tambora, put it well: “For three years following Tambora’s explosion, to be alive, almost anywhere in the world, meant to be hungry.” In many areas, food scarcity led to riots and other unrest, especially in Europe which was struggling with the aftermath of the Napoleonic Wars during the Year without a Summer.
Averill: In 1816 Ireland, for example, it rained four times more than was typical. Crop failure was so severe that many were forced to sell their clothes and hair for food. Wearing rags in the cold and wet weather made the Irish susceptible to typhus, which added to their misery. Ireland’s Chief Secretary Charles Grant wrote: “In the years 1816 and 1817, the state of the weather was so moist and wet, that the lower orders in Ireland were almost deprived of fuel werewith to dry themselves, and of food whereon to subsist. They were obliged to feed on esculent plants such as mustard seeds, nettles, potato-tops, and potato-stalks- a diet which brought on a debility of body and encouraged the disease more than anything else could have done.” In Ballina (County Mayo), protests ensued over the export of oatmeal. The riot became so violent that the military was deployed to protect the town. Three rioters were killed and many more were seriously wounded.
Marissa: Bavarian towns such as Augsburg and Memmingen were in turmoil for similar reasons. Rumors were circulating that authorities were exporting corn to Switzerland. The local newspapers illustrate the levels of desperation felt by Bavarian villagers. They reported that: “thousands of men and women, [were] ripping chunks out of a living chestnut mare… They’re sending our corn out to Switzerland.” The rumors of export sparked several riots that shut down the small cities.
In England, the East Midlands also experienced unrest related to food insecurity. Villagers in Pentrich, Derbyshire suffered high grain prices, and post-war unemployment on a large-scale. They amassed weapons and marched on the village, killing one servant whose master refused to join the rising. A spy in their midst informed on them and so magistrates were able to neutralize the uprising fairly quickly but dozens of men were indicted on treason. Three of them were executed publicly to dissuade other hungry and disaffected groups from doing the same.
Averill: Many of these riots revolved around the export of food in towns where the local populations were near starvation. In the Bavarian cases Marissa mentioned, magistrates were trying to provide relief to Switzerland, where Tambora’s impact was particularly severe. There, the price of grain quadrupled between 1815 and 1817. As in other parts of the world, cold weather led to unripened crops and wet weather caused the rest to rot in the fields. Snow fell in record amounts for the two winters following the eruption and there was 80% more rainfall than in an average year. Residents reported having to heat their homes throughout the summer months. Unseasonably cold weather in the summer of 1816 prevented the annual melting of the Alpine ice caps so that when the cooling subsided in 1817, there was more ice than usual and the Swiss experienced unprecedented flooding. Switzerland may have been unequally affected by Tambora but it’s also the best-studied area because it was the setting of an important cultural milestone for English literature.
Marissa: England’s youngest and most promising authors gathered at Lake Geneva in the Summer of 1816. Among them were Lord Byron, Percy Shelley, and Mary Godwin (soon to be Mary Shelley), the novelist and daughter of the badass feminist Mary Wollstonecraft. Lord Byron was escaping crushing debts and rumors of incest in England. [I just listened to the History Chicks episode on Ada Lovelace, who was Lord Byron’s daughter– so I have this family on my mind] But anyway, Byron was living in a villa on Lake Geneva. Mary, Percy, and Mary’s sister Claire visited Byron, intending to escape London’s dreary weather with a tour of Europe. But they were obviously unaware of Tambora’s impact on Europe’s climate. After witnessing the wet and wintry bleakness of a post-Tambora Swiss summer, Mary wrote “Never was a scene more awfully desolate.” The group holed up in a villa and challenged each other to pass the time by telling the best ghost stories. It was the only activity that seemed appropriate given the dreary weather. Several notable literary works emerged from this friendly storytelling competition. Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, Lord Byron’s poem Darkness, and the seeds of a novel about a blood-sucking man, which was used later by John William Polidori to write The Vampyre.
Averill: This story might have been dramatized somewhat. But only in recent decades have scholars connected the Tambora eruption to this semi-mythical origin story for the Gothic movement in art and literature. But English literature was not the only cultural consequence of Tambora’s climatic impact. In the Chinese province of Yunnan which we discussed earlier, a new genre called famine poetry developed among the residents of the province. One poet, Li Yuyang, was forced to return home to save his parents from bankruptcy during the famine. He watched his neighbors commit beastly acts such as infanticide, child sales and murder in hungry desperation. He barely survived himself. Suffering from malnutrition and mental illness after the famine, Li died ten years later at the age of 42. Here is an excerpt from one of his poems, translated into English:
“People rush from falling houses in their thousands …
(It) is worse than the work of thieves. Bricks crack. Walls fall.
In an instant, the house is gone. My child catches my coat
And cries out. I am running in the muddy road, then
Back to rescue my money and grains from the ruins.
What else to do? My loved ones must eat.
He writes of parents selling their children for food.
Still they know the price of a son
Is not enough to pay for their hunger.
And yet to watch him die is worse …
The little ones don’t understand, how could they?
But the older boys keep close, weeping.”
Marissa: Art historians have successfully correlated the post-Tambora optical aerosol depth with the 1816-1817 painting Greifswald in Moonlight by German painter Caspar David Friedrich. So we know with confidence that his painting would have been entirely different if it weren’t for Tambora’s eruption. English painter William Turner developed his painting style after observing the unique and spectacular sunsets of the Year Without a Summer. Ironically, his 1817 painting Eruption of Mt. Vesuvius is the best example of this influence even though Turner had no idea that he was witnessing volcanic skies himself.
Averill: Several inventions have also been connected to Tambora’s climatic impact. In 1817 German inventor Karl Drais patented the “walking machine” which is a walking bicycle.. so basically a bicycle without pedals. Drais perceived a need for alternate modes of transportation when the Year without a Summer made grain so expensive that few people could afford to feed horses anymore. During the heights of famine, many horses died of starvation or were killed for meat by their owners. People were in need of a device that would help them travel faster but one that they would not need to feed.
Marissa: This is interesting to me because it tells us that Drais, and his peers had no idea that this was going to pass. They might have thought this was the new normal… because they had no way of knowing that this was a temporary effect of a volcanic eruption.
I wonder how many people felt that way in Europe… that it was dark times and that it wasn’t going to improve. This mindset might have precipitated mass migration to America. The beginning of the first 19th-century wave of immigration to America coincides exactly with the eruption. And most people who came to America cited civil unrest and famine as their motivating factors for leaving Europe. The Irish and Swiss, and Germans made up a majority of this immigrant wave and those were areas that were particularly influenced by volcanic climate change.
Averill: There was also a lot of migration within North America. Land was becoming more scarce on the east coast and the crop failures following the Mount Tambora eruption sent settlers from the Eastern seaboard into the frontier in search of fertile land and resources. This westward movement triggered violent interactions with indigenous peoples which came to characterize the Wild West. So basically… without Tambora we would not have had Manifest Destiny and absolutely zero Spaghetti Westerns…. Just kidding… but really, this sequence of events illustrates how fragile our ecosystems really are. And that our ecosystems are interwoven with human systems in ways that we never realized in the past.
Marissa: We should mention that there was SOME idea that volcanic eruptions were related to weather patterns early on. Benjamin Franklin, for example, posited a correlation between volcanic emissions and weather anomalies. Swiss botanist Heinrich Zollinger was born a few years after Tambora erupted but in the 1830s he studied botany at the University of Geneva and became interested in volcanology. Ever since the Year without a Summer, Swiss scientists had suspected a correlation between the Tambora eruption and the following years’ weather anomalies. In the 1840s, Zollinger moved to Java and spent time studying Tambora. In 1847 he made a detailed drawing of the Tambora caldera and spoke with locals on the island, though he found it to still be depopulated. According to his report, Sumbawa communities were still recovering from the disaster even though it had been 30 years.
Averill: The Swiss never made any definitive connections between volcanic activity and climatic change but by the time of the Krakatoa eruption in 1883, the science community was eager to find such proof. This time, they were backed by a horrified and fascinated international press which turned the eruption into a global event. It helped that the first successful transatlantic telegraph cable had just been laid 17 years earlier. In 1815, it took 6 months for news of the Tambora eruption to reach Britain. When Krakatoa erupted, the entire world was notified within hours. Popular interest in the eruption encouraged geological studies and a public scientific discourse which led to the discovery of how volcanoes function and how they impact the atmosphere.
Marissa: It’s interesting to think of more subtle ways that inclement weather might have impacted culture. Were people generally more depressed for those few years? Was there an increase in mental illness? Vitamin D deficiency? Or even criminality and domestic violence? Does it have anything to do with the enthusiastic reception of Marxism decades later?
Sources and Further Reading:
Brönnimann, Stefan, and Daniel Krämer. Tambora and the “Year Without a Summer” of 1816: A Persepctive on Earth and Human Systems Science. 2016.
Broad, William J. “A Summer Without Sun.” New York Times April 25, 2015, D1.
Cao, Shuji, Yushang Li, and Bin Yang. 2012. “Mt. Tambora, Climatic Changes, and China’s Decline in the Nineteenth Century”. Journal of World History. 23, no. 3: 587-607.
Gao, Chaochao, Yujuan Gao, Qian Zhang, and Chunming Shi. 2017. “Climatic Aftermath of the 1815 Tambora Eruption in China”. Journal of Meteorological Research. 31, no. 1: 28-38.
Dennis, Matthew, and Munger, Michael. 1816: “The Mighty Operations of Nature”: An Environmental History of the Year Without a Summer. 1816: “The Mighty Operations of Nature”: An Environmental History of the Year Without a Summer. University of Oregon, n.d. <http://hdl.handle.net/1794/12417>.
Harington, Charles Richard. The Year Without a Summer? World Climate in 1816. Ottawa: Canadian Museum of Nature, 1992.
Lebowitz, Rachel. Year of No Summer. Biblioasis, 2018.
Roach, John. “‘Lost Kingdom’ Discovered on Volcanic Island in Indonesia.” National Geographic News. February 27, 2006,
Sullivan, Michael. “Mount Tambora Eruption Hardly Known.” NPR. October 27, 2007.
“The Tambora Eruption and ‘The Year Without Summer’,” History in an Hour, http://www.historyinanhour.com/2012/11/16/tambora-eruption-1815/


All of these are written as group strategies, but may be adapted for individual work.
Challenging Vocabulary Challenge!
A Great Game after a test or at the end of a grading period.
Object: To win points for your team by creating definitions for little known words and fooling the other team into believing your definition is the correct one.
Materials: Vocabulary Strips, blank strips
- Prepare individual vocabulary strips of little known words and their definitions from the dictionary appropriate for the grade level. I.e. loquacious - full of excessive talk : WORDY’ There will need to be enough words for 3 complete rounds or 6 words per # of teams
- Cut 20 blank paper strips the same size as the one with the word on it.
- Fold all strips in half keeping the vocabulary strips separate from the blank ones.
- Create teams of 4-5 and have them select a team spokesperson. (Teams may select names or just be Team 1, Team 2, etc. )Two teams will play against each other each round. The team that wins plays the new team.
- Determine which team will go first by some method such as ‘Pick a number between 1 & 20 and the closest goes first.”
- Each round will consist of 6+ word definitions.((your discretion but needs to be an even number)
- The winner of each word definition will receive 10 points. The winning team of Each round plays the new team. Scoring begins at ‘0’ with each round.
- For each round:
- To the team presenting the word definition, hand out the folded strips- one with a word definition and the others are blank.
- Announce the word to the whole group.
- Give the presenting team members 1 minute to come up with their ‘dummy definitions’.
- When told to begin, the presenting team members will each present their definition of the word.
- The opposing team members will be given 30 seconds to decide on which definition is the correct one.
- The team’s spokesperson will announce the group’s choice.
- If it is the correct one, the team receives the 10 points. If it is incorrect, the presenting team receives the 10 points.
- Play now goes to the other team
- The winning team plays the new team.
***** If there is enough time, play can continue until all the teams have played each other.
Strategy #2: Vocabulary Drawn from Literature/Quotes/Content
Using the example below, create an activity or strategy in which challenging or enriched vocabulary is drawn from literature or other written material. As a group, demonstrate/share with the class the strategy you have created and the intended grade level for the strategy.
“The marvelous new militancy which has engulfed the Negro community must not lead us to a distrust of all white people, for many of our white brothers, as evidenced by their presence here today, have come to realize that their destiny is tied up with our destiny, and they have come to realize that their freedom is inextricably (in-EX-trick-uh-blee) tied to our freedom. This offense we share, mounted to storm the battlements of injustice, must be carried forth by a biracial army. We cannot walk alone.”
Literature Lessons for Self-Discipline
Classic Literature Resources - a variety of books, websites with audio and lesson plans, activities, etc.
Strategy #3: Word Wall
Your group will work together to create an example/prototype of a word wall which includes enriched vocabulary. You will describe/show what your word wall would look like, and the process by which it is built (how the words are chosen and the procedure by which they end up on the wall):
1. Please include the sources from which your vocabulary may be drawn.
2. Please describe what your word wall may look like.
3. Please explain the procedure by which the words are learned & placed on the wall.
4. Please inform the class the intended grade level for your word wall.
Be prepared for your group to demonstrate/share with the class the strategy you have created and the intended grade level for the strategy.
Resource: Great Expectations Word Wall - multiple ideas and strategies
Strategy #4: Use of Correct Terminology
As you facilitate learning, it is important to avoid diluting the words you use in your dialogue with students. Here are some examples:
|Today we will begin a study of plants.||Today we will begin a study of horticulture.|
Strategy #5: Word Day
Celebrate words with a “WORD DAY”. Everyone selects and dresses up to symbolize the meaning of a word they have selected. Approval by teacher is required.
- Have paper and yarn/string for making Word - definition cards for everyone to wear.
- When possible, include all staff i.e. cafeteria workers, maintenance, etc.
- Have the students write the Word, syllabication, and pronunciation along with definitions on the card. Add synonyms, antonyms, etc. if desired.
- Tie in with curriculum requiring the words to be from what the specific area of study - science, math, etc.
- Have them classify themselves into groups such as the ones listed below. In a class have them stand if they meet the criteria. Let other students check and decide if the criteria is met. Encourage the students to create other groups.
- parts of speech
- words with at least one long vowel or short vowel, etc.
- words that can be more than one part of speech i.e. rain, jump, level, etc.
- words that can have a suffix or prefix added
- words that have ____# of syllables
- words that contain other smaller words.
- For lower grade levels, have the students get in a line and put themselves in alphabetical order. (without talking)
- Students can have their words cards turned so no one can see the word. Others may ask yes/no questions to try to guess what the word is based on the dress of the student.
- Variation: Have each student carry around a blank sheet and pencil. While doing a mill-to-music, students walk around and ask yes/no questions to each other trying to figure out the word represented. At a signal they write their guess for the word on that student’s paper along with their name and then go to another person. After a period of time stop to see if anyone has correctly guessed any of the words.
- Lead a discussion of what types of questions can be asked to gain the most information. See Question Resources below:
- Socratic Questioning Resource - Includes:
- An explanation of Socratic questioning
- A printable sheet of Socratic Question stems
- A Mini booklet of questions stems
- A foldable paper cube with Socratic question stems
- Instructions for 4 Classroom Learning Strategies.
- Revised Bloom’s Taxonomy Question Resources - Includes:
- A printable sheet of Bloom’s Questions stems
- A foldable mini booklet with Bloom’s Question stems
- Directions on how to make the booklet
- A foldable cube with Bloom’s Question stems
- Instructions for 4 classroom learning strategies using these Bloom’s tools.
- Six Question Learning Strategies
- Six Question Cube - Question Cube with the six basic questions, Who, What, When, Where, Why, and How
- Six Questions Stems Sheet
- Sign Language for Question Stems - Add a nonverbal component using official sign language
- Six Questions Stems Mini Booklet
- Mini Booklet Directions - How-to instructions for making the booklet
- Music Videos for Practice 5 and Question Stems Songs - Includes some songs in Spanish
- Sign Language for 6 Question Stems - Add a nonverbal component using official sign language
- Music Videos for Practice 5 and Question Stems Songs - Includes some songs in Spanish
- Socratic Questioning Resource - Includes:
- MIss Alaineus by Debra Frasier - 11:12 min. video and Lesson Plan: Learning to Learn with Miss Alaineus: A Vocabulary Disaster ...Debra Frasier website about MIss Alaineus
- HOST A VOCABULARY PARADE! - Debra Frasier - Complete plans for a vocabulary parade
Strategy #6: Word Games
Word games can be interesting and fun way to build vocabulary. Some traditional word games include Hangman, Boggle, Scrabble, Pictionary, Match Game, and crossword puzzles, just to name a few. These games can be structured and/or modified to be used with various content areas, such as learning academic vocabulary terms.
Your group will describe/demonstrate a word game that you propose can be used to build vocabulary. Games may be designed for any grade level. Please explain how it might be used across curriculum areas. (How would you use that activity in science? Math? Etc. ) Please tell us the intended grade level for your strategy.
- Alphabet Math Game - a great vocabulary game that encourages creating your own word puzzles and practicing math skills at the same time.
- Mind Games - Resource for a wide variety of online word games
- Word Puzzles - 4 Online Resources with hundreds of puzzles
- Stories with Holes by Nathan Levy - The famous logic stories that make kids and adults think! Each book contains new stories for children ages 7-77. Stimulate pupil critical and creative thinking skills.
- STORIES WITH HOLES - A sampling of stories with holes - There are other similar resources online.
Strategy #7: Morphological Connection
A morpheme is defined as a meaningful language unit consisting of a word, such as man, or a word element, such as –ed in walked, that cannot be divided into smaller meaningful parts. Morphology, the study of the patterns of word formation and combination of morphemes, is highly beneficial to students in their development of an enriched vocabulary. Making morphological connections is something that can be done within the structure of any given content lesson. It can be viewed as a “mini lesson” within a lesson, or a “teachable moment.”
The following is an example of making morphological connections using the vocabulary word torture, drawn from a piece of literature:
Literature used—“The Story of Thesues: Part One.” from:
Classics to Read Aloud to Your Children: Selections from Shakespeare, Twain, Dickens, O.Henry… by William F. Russell - A perennially popular collection of short stories, poems, legends, and myths from great works of literature that are especially appropriate for parents to read aloud to their children aged five to twelve.
Sample teacher dialogue—
“We can see in the word torture, the Latin word tortus, which meant “to twist or bend,” reminding us of the earliest methods of torturing human being. But the idea of “twisting” is also apparent in many other common words as well. A blackmailer might try to extort (ex-meaning “from”) money by twisting it from his victim; faces or figures may be distorted (dis-meaning “away”) or contorted (con- meaning “with”) when they are twisted out of their normal shape; a clever retort (re- meaning “back”) twists a remark back upon the opponent. Even the tortoise, which we saw as a man-eater in this myth, bears the tort root in its name because of the “twisted” appearance of its feet.
Create two examples of the use of morphology or morphological connection. Be prepared for your group to demonstrate/share with the class the strategy you have created and the intended grade level for the strategy. You have ____ minutes in which to create your strategy.”
Strategy #8: Journaling
Using reflective learning journals (Journaling Tips) to improve individual and team comprehension brings connections across the curriculum. Writing about a subject requires a high level of understanding. Writing in a reflective form offers students a chance to think about their thinking, or metacognition. This process can solidify concepts and define misconceptions. How could you use journaling to develop better neurological pathways and to develop vocabulary?
Create a procedure that includes the use of a learning journal in a classroom setting.
i.e. At the end of a math lesson learners will write in their math journal what they learned that day.
Be able to answer these questions:
- What is the objective of the exercise?
- What do you hope to accomplish?
- How will it happen?
Resource: Self-reflection Strategies - includes reflection writing stems, poster, a One-Minute Feedback strategy, etc.
Strategy #9: Realization of the Power of the Spoken Word
The objective of your group is to explain/demonstrate how using more robust words in place of common words has the potential of expanding students’ vocabulary. The particular structure you will use is “synonym brainstorming. You have 5 minutes in which to practice your structure.
Step 1—Decide who will be your group leader. The leader of your group will say a commonly used simple word, such as big or pretty.
Step 2—After the leader states the commonly used simple word, the others in your group will each list on paper all of the synonyms for that word that they can produce in 30 seconds.
Step 3—The leader will ask each person to share the words they wrote on their list. What unique words were produced? Common words?
Step 4—Your group will collaboratively decide upon a “common” word to use with the Class. Your group leader will facilitate this structure with the class.
Step 5—Your group leader will facilitate the “synonym brainstorming” structure with the Class. Your leader will instruct the participants in the class to each list on paper all of the synonyms he/she can produce in 30 seconds. Have participants share their words. See Personal Pocket Thesaurus as one way to keep a lexicon of the synonyms for these common words.
Step 6—Share with the class that “The objective of this structure is to explain/demonstrate how using more robust words in place of common words has the potential of expanding students’ vocabulary.”
We often call them $100 Words!
Strategy #7 Option: “TIRED WORDS”
Learners create an ongoing Word Wall with synonyms for overused words.
1. Brainstorm commonly overused words such as good, bad, said, happy, pretty, saw, big, nice, little, etc.
2. Make a display with pockets for each word. Have learners find and write synonyms on slips provided that may be put in the appropriate pocket. This is ongoing and words may be added throughout the year.
3. Direct learners to use the Word Wall to find synonyms that fit into their writing or speaking.
4. Option: Create Personal Pocket Thesaurus – learner creates an individual thesaurus for these words. Click on link for printable documents. This creates a booklet that learners create as a resource.
Strategy #10: Word of the Day/Week
Your group will describe/demonstrate how you will integrate the use of the word of the day into your daily vocabulary.
- Determine its part of speech - noun, adjective, etc. and how it might be used in a sentence.
- Write 2-3 sentences using the word.
- Describe situations when using the word would be appropriate.
- You should include how you will use the word of the day in a valuable way. (How it will be connected in to your daily living?)
- You should include how you will determine (or select) what the word of the day will be. What is your process or criteria for selecting the word of the day?
You have ____ minutes in which to create your strategy.
Strategy # 11: ‘Hand’y Curriculum Connections
** Digital Download available
This strategy integrates the Eight Expectations, Life Principles and five literary elements in the analyzation of any piece of literature or video story.
Strategy #12: Novel Study
Your group will demonstrate/create a strategy for developing enriched vocabulary using novels, stories, basals, poems, or other writings. This strategy can be used whether or not you are required to utilize a reading series prescribed by your district. The basic idea behind this strategy is that you enrich whatever reading material you decide to use by expanding upon vocabulary pulled from the material (or vocabulary you attach to the material).
Your group has been provided a copy of Aesop’s Fables. Aesop Fable Collection
- Quickly select one of the fables you wish to use. (Or, select another story of your choice.)
- From this fable your group will identify the enriched vocabulary terms.
- Collaborate on how you would expand or build on the enriched vocabulary, and prepare how you will share this information to the whole group.
Be prepared for your group to demonstrate/share with the class the strategy you have created and the intended grade level for the strategy. You have 5 minutes in which to create/prepare your strategy.
Strategy #13: Lexicon
A lexicon is a personal dictionary, often used to include enriched vocabulary.
The steps that a teacher decides to include in a class lexicon may be determined by the particular needs of the class. There are 5 factors to consider when deciding to utilize a class lexicon structure:
- What steps will be included in the class lexicon? There may be specific skills your students need to work on (from various content areas). With this in mind, specific steps can be created to include in the lexicon that will help students develop those skills.
- What will be the lexicon procedure? It is best for the teacher to lead the students through the steps, especially in the beginning.
- How often will a lexicon page be completed?
- What will be the preferred methods of binding the lexicon pages? 3 ring binder, index cards, spiral notebook, etc.
- How will the students utilize their lexicon? In order for the students to internalize the words they have included in their lexicon, they should refer back to it from time to time as they work in class. It should be integrated into their daily work.
- What words will be included in the lexicon? How will you determine which words will be used?
- Select a group spokesperson (the person who will share your lexicon to the class and who will share the groups answers to the questions listed below)
- Select a scribe (the person who will be writing your lexicon illustration as dictated by the group)
- Your group will create the steps of a classroom lexicon and your scribe will illustrate those steps using a vocabulary word, such as the word lexicon.
- Your group will collaborate on your answer to these questions:
- What will be your preferred method of binding the lexicon pages?
- How will the students’ use of their lexicon be integrated into the curriculum?
- How will you determine/select which words to include in the lexicon?
Your group has ____ minutes total:
--to create your lexicon steps
--for your scribe to illustrate those steps using a vocabulary word
--to answer the three questions, which will be shared by the spokesperson
Resource for making books:
- Mini Booklet Directions - How-to instructions for making the booklet
- Making Books - Free Projects - 9 different books - directions are also given in Spanish
- Videos on how to make books: https://www.youtube.com/user/skgaylord
Strategy #14: Posters
Visuals or peripherals are a valuable teaching strategy. Eric Jensen, in his book, Brain Compatible Strategies, suggests that visuals are “Brain Activators. He also suggests that up to 90% of learning comes from peripheral input as opposed to direct instruction. The planting of visuals in various areas of the room or providing cooperative learning structures develops the brain to a greater degree and aids in recall of information from a greater number of pathways. Your group will create guidelines for incorporating visual/peripheral teaching into a lesson. How will you use this strategy, how will you include students in the development of this strategy in enriching vocabulary that is being studied?
Online Resources for Creating Word Posters:
These free online sites allow the creation of posters with your own vocabulary words offering wide choices of colors, patterns, etc.
- Poster Example created with WORD ART
- Poster Example created
with Word Clouds
Strategy #15: Flash Cards/Dictionary Drill
Accessing resources is not only a tested objective; it is a foundational skill across the curriculum. Your group will create/demonstrate the use of flash cards/dictionary drill. An example of one use is as follows:
Using 3x5 cards, have all students create a set of words to be studied. Place the word, phonetic spelling, and syllabication on one side of the card. Place the definition, synonyms, antonyms, and part of speech on the reverse side.
As a sponge activity (an activity used to bridge a transition such as class changes, after lunch, when students need a change of pace during the day),
- Arrange students in pairs or groups.(3-4).
- One student will be captain. The captain’s job is to present the flash cards to the group, one student at a time.
- The captain can choose the response from the student from the following:
- Spell the word,
- Count the syllables, 3.
- Define the word,
- Give a synonym or antonym.
- This is repeated for a designated period of time, usually 2 or 3 minutes. Then, the role of captain is passed to another student.
- The entire group is responsible for maintaining the correctness of the answers, and giving support if the student requires help. “We will not let you fail” is the attitude developed.


Wind is the movement of large amounts of air. Even though we can't see air, we know that it is made up of molecules of different kinds of gasses, mostly nitrogen and oxygen. When lots of these molecules move, usually in one direction, we call this wind. Where does wind come from Wind is the movement of air caused by differences in air pressure. Scientists that study weather, called meteorologists, use instruments like an anemometer to measure wind speed. You might have.. (Larry Scheckel/R) Wind is caused by a difference in pressure from one area to another area on the surface of the Earth. Air naturally moves from high to low pressure, and when it does so, it.. . Alternatively, he or she may supervise the manufacture of rotor blades or other components. Many different types of engineers play a role in wind energy projects
The energy that drives wind originates with the sun, which heats the Earth unevenly, creating warm spots and cool spots. Two simple examples of this are sea breezes and land breezes. Sea breezes.. The Global Wind Energy Council projects global wind capacity will reach 536,000 MW by 2017, almost double its current size, with growth especially concentrated in the Asia and Europe . Turbines are getting larger and more sophisticated, with land-based turbines now commonly in the 1-2 MW range, and offshore turbines in the 3-5 MW range
Wind, air, zephyr, breeze, blast, gust refer to a quantity of air set in motion naturally. Wind applies to any such air in motion, blowing with whatever degree of gentleness or violence. Air, usually poetical, applies to a very gentle motion of the air. Zephyr, also poetical, refers to an air characterized by its soft, mild quality Wind, in climatology, the movement of air relative to the surface of the Earth. Winds play a significant role in determining and controlling climate and weather. A brief treatment of winds follows. For full treatment, see climate: Wind Wind is the flow of gases on a large scale. On the surface of the Earth, wind consists of the bulk movement of air.Winds are commonly classified by their spatial scale, their speed, the types of forces that cause them, the regions in which they occur, and their effect.The strongest observed winds on a planet in the Solar System occur on Neptune and Saturn Wind is nothing more than moving air. The wind can blow at different speeds and move in all different directions—sometimes it even blows in more than one direction at the same time! But what makes the air move? Quick Navigation [ show
Wind can carry small particles such as sand, silt, and clay. Wind erosion abrades surfaces and makes desert pavement, ventifacts, and desert varnish. Sand dunes are common wind deposits that come in different shapes, depending on winds and sand availability. Loess is a very fine grained, wind-borne deposit that can be important to soil formation Study Guide Science 5th grade -Weather and Climate Weather- the day to day changes of : temperature, precipitation, wind and air pressure. Climate- long term patterns over a period of time of an area. The average over many years. Climate changes very slowly. 3 Major Climate Zones 1. Tropical -warm and wet most of the year (equator) 2 The science behind the wind In generating electricity from wind, strictly speaking, we start with the sun. The energy radiated by the sun heats up the air in Earth's atmosphere. Air expands when it warms, making the warmer air less dense and 'lighter' than cooler air, creating a region of lower pressure. Cool air is usually more dense The relationship between air pressure and wind. Air pressure and wind speed are related: as air pressure drops, wind speed increases. Wind: is air in motion. It is produced by the uneven heating of the earth's surface by the sun. See video below to learn how changes in air pressure from high to low pressure cause wind
When the wind blows, particles in the gust of air are moving quickly. And that motion carries kinetic energy, which can be captured and harnessed to create electricity. The principle behind a wind-electric turbine isn't too different from an ordinary dam -- only it's capturing wind instead of water Wind energy capacity in the Americas has tripled over the past decade. In the U.S., wind is now a dominant renewable energy source, with enough wind turbines to generate more than 100 million watts, or megawatts, of electricity, equivalent to the consumption of about 29 million average homes . As one area heats up more than another, the difference in pressure creates wind and becomes a cycle of cool air and warm air Well, kinetic energy is proportional to mass times velocity squared. When speaking about wind, its mass refers to that of the air molecules. So when you double wind speed, its kinetic energy is..
Wind power is energy, such as electricity, that is generated directly from the wind. It is considered a renewable energy source because there is always wind on the Earth and we aren't using up the wind when we make energy from it. Wind power also does not cause pollution. Wind Turbines and Wind Farm To put it simply, the wind is a free resource. It does not belong to anyone because it belongs to all of us. There are many places around the world where the wind blows hard. Unlike other energy sources, wind is a source that will never run out Solar wind is a continuous stream of charged, subatomic particles emitted by the sun. To humans, the flow is kind of a mixed blessing. The GPS signals we now depend on can get disrupted by solar wind. But solar wind is also a driving mechanism behind those stunning northern lights — and their equally gorgeous southern counterparts Wind possesses kinetic energy. The kinetic energy possessed by wind is called wind energy. Uses of Wind Energy are: (i) Wind energy is used to pump the ground water
Wind is the movement of the atmosphere. The atmosphere moves because the Sun heats the Earth?s surface, causing air to increase in temperature, expand, and rise upwards. Cool air moves in to replace the warm air, and we feel this movement of air as wind. The air flows from areas of high pressure to areas of low pressure around the globe Nov 15, 2019 - Find out what wind is all about in this intro to earth science worksheet Horizontal axis wind turbines can be further classified into fixed speed (FS) or variable speed (VS). The FS wind turbine generator (FSWT) is designed to operate at maximum efficiency while operating at a rated wind speed. In this case, the optimum tip-speed ratio is obtained for the rotor airfoil at a rated wind speed
Lesson focuses on how wind energy can be generated on both a large and small scale. Student teams design and build a working windmill out of everyday products and learn about anemometer and site testing. Student windmills must be able to sustain the wind generated by a fan or hairdryer at medium speed at 2 feet and rotate, lifting a small object upward. Students evaluate the effectiveness of. How fast is the wind blowing? This science experiment provides step-by-step instructions to help you answer this question. Science project. Wind. Worksheet. Wind. Find out what wind is all about in this intro to earth science worksheet. 1st grade . Science. Wind turbines are giant windmills with huge blades that get pushed around by the wind. As the blades rotate they spin a generator, which creates electricity. However, environmental groups and.. Fun Wind Science Activities for Kids to Explore Wind Power Energy. As usual, we listed the activities based on kids' age, those preschoolers can do are at the top of the list, and those for older kids are towards the bottom of the list
Wind farms, also called wind plants, refer to a large number of wind turbines that are built close together. Countries such as the U.S. and China are producing more and more energy from wind farms. It was reported in March 2015 that China is getting more electricity from wind than from its nuclear power plants, and it has more of those than any. Wind is the largest source of momentum for the ocean surface, impacting individual surface waves and complete current systems. When observing and analyzing ocean phenomenon, it is critical to consider wind in our measurements Wind is air in motion, travelling between areas of different pressure Modern wind turbines already represent a tightly optimized confluence of materials science and aerodynamic engineering. Veers et al. review the challenges and opportunities for further expanding this technology, with an emphasis on the need for interdisciplinary collaboration. They highlight the need to better understand atmospheric physics in the regions where taller turbines will operate as. Wind is caused by uneven heating of the earth's surface by the sun. Because the earth's surface is made up of different types of land and water, it absorbs the sun's heat at different rates. One example of this uneven heating is the daily wind cycle
The ThemeTracker below shows where, and to what degree, the theme of Science vs. Religion appears in each scene of Inherit the Wind. Click or tap on any chapter to read its Summary & Analysis. Click or tap on any chapter to read its Summary & Analysis The term wind power means the same as wind energy. According to the Global Wind Energy Council (GWEC), global wind energy expanded by 10% in 2017 to 539 GW. National Geographic has the following definition of the term: Wind energy is produced by the movement of air (wind) and converted into power for human use
Wind energy is clean and renewable. Large groups of wind turbines are called wind farms. Around 80 different countries use wind power to generate electricity commercially (as of 2009). In 1997 wind power generated only 0.1% of the world's electricity, this increased to 1.5% in 2008 and 2.5% in 2010 Wind Turbine Kit Build a sturdy, free-standing wind turbine with a plastic base and take your experimenting to new levels! You'll be able to test the power of your blade designs with the digital multimeter, store wind energy for later use with the super capacitor, and experiment with series and parallel circuits using two motors and three LEDs
Wind energy can be harnessed to produce power in a variety of forms. The wind can power mechanical assemblies that grind grain, pump water, generate electricity, and more. From the first wind energy assemblies of 200 BC to the massive wind farms of today, wind energy is one of the oldest sources of intentional power and energy humans have used Weather Wiz Kids is a fun and safe website for kids about all the weather info they need to know. It contains tools for weather education, including weather games, activities, experiments, photos, a glossary and educational teaching materials for the classroom Essays To Write About Wind Science 5th Grade, simple informative essay about moose, best university for creative writing in australia, cover letter phd student 29 If you need professional help with completing any kind of homework, AffordablePapers.com is the right place to get the high quality for affordable prices As the wind blows to about five degrees north and south of the equator, both air and ocean currents come to a halt in a band of hot, dry air. This 10-degree belt around Earth's midsection is called the Inter-Tropical Convergence Zone, more commonly known as the doldrums
The solar wind streams off of the Sun in all directions at speeds of about 400 km/s (about 1 million miles per hour). The source of the solar wind is the Sun's hot corona.The temperature of the corona is so high that the Sun's gravity cannot hold on to it Since these winds originate in the east, they are called easterlies. However, the wind direction is quite irregular, occasionally blowing to the west or north. Rising air flows toward the poles, and extremely cold sinking air flows back toward the equator. The westerlies wind pattern is responsible for most of the weather flow in the United States Wind in simple terms is nothing but moving air. We all enjoy wind rustling through the leaves in our garden. It has also expanded the range of transport and has provided a power source in terms of mechanical energy for the generation of electricity in windmills and recreation purposes in hot air balloons Windmills, wind turbines, and sails all use it to some extent, and these collection methods can be used in a variety of ways. The power created by wind is considered to be a form of clean energy, since wind is an entirely renewable resource. As of 2008, around 1% of the world's energy came from wind, with the industry growing significantly
Wind Energy Science project #3 Vertical Axis Wind Turbine Science Fair Project wind turbine A vertical-axis wind turbine (VAWT) is a type of wind turbine where the main rotor shaft is set transverse to the wind (but not necessarily vertically) while the main components are located at the base of the turbine science career of a wind energy engineer. Education and Training. A bachelor's degree in engineering, such as electrical, aeronautical, aerospace, mechanical, or civil, is required for a position as a wind energy engineer Wind Gust: Is a sudden, brief increase in speed of the wind. According to U.S. weather observing practice, gusts are reported when the peak wind speed reaches at least 16 knots and the variation in wind speed between the peaks and lulls is at least 9 knots. The duration of a gust is usually less than 20 seconds
Wind erosion is a natural process that moves soil from one location to another by wind power. It can cause significant economic and environmental damage. Wind erosion can be caused by a light wind that rolls soil particles along the surface through to a strong wind that lifts a large volume of soil particles into the air to create dust storms Group Manager - Wind Energy Science . **Location** CO - Boulder . **Position Type** Regular . **Hours Per Week** 40 . **Job Description** NREL's 305-acre Flatirons Campus is the nation's premier wind energy, water power, and grid integration research facility Wind has been a big part of helping scientists understand coronal mass ejections, or CMEs. Wind was designed to measure the magnetic fields of CMEs as they passed by. Coronal mass ejections are gigantic clouds of solar material that burst off the Sun, pulling solar magnetic fields along for the ride Science for Preschoolers - What is Wind? Wind is exciting for preschoolers to watch. It blows tree branches back and forth and chases dried leaves across the yard. Wind can also be fun to listen to - it howls, whispers and whistles
At the National Wind Technology Center (NWTC) in Golden, Colorado, scientists are working to improve wind-power technology and lower the cost of generating electricity. The center is part of the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, where researchers look for Earth-friendly ways to power our lives 6th grade science Wind. STUDY. Flashcards. Learn. Write. Spell. Test. PLAY. Match. Gravity. Created by. erace12. Terms in this set (32) What is the definition of wind? moving air. What makes the wind blow? energy in wind comes from the sun. What part of the earth receives more of the sun's energy? the equator or the north and south pole
Wind-chill factor is when the wind carries the heat that you produce away and off of your body, making it seem cooler than it actually is. Name the two basic types of winds. Local winds and global winds Global winds are a system of wind patterns distributing warm air unevenly across Earth. If Earth did not rotate, winds would move from the equator to their respective poles. Because Earth rotates, winds appear to be moving east in the Coriolis effect Wind Worksheets Identify objects that can be moved by wind Wind is a moving air. In these weather worksheets, students identify objects that can be moved by wind
Wind Energy Science is an international scientific journal dedicated to the publication and public discussion of studies that take an interdisciplinary perspective of fundamental or pioneering research in wind energy Wind turbines, solar panels, and batteries have a relatively short life, resulting in significant amounts of waste. Wind turbines have a relatively short life, approximately 20-25 years, about half the length of conventional energy machines, like gas turbines. View source . Solar panels likewise have a relatively short life span, most around 20.
The wind speed can double around the corners, Chen said. The wind tunnel effect can be felt flowing between two tall buildings as well, as is the case with the two residence halls. The closer proximity creates a smaller space for wind to travel. Therefore, the air pressure drops, causing the wind to move faster and circle between the two. Understanding the global wind and wave climate, and how it may be changing, is important for a variety of reasons. For example, ocean waves play a central role in defining the air-water boundary roughness and thus affect the magnitude of fluxes of energy and CO 2 between the atmosphere and ocean.Also, breaking-wave setup can be an important component of total water level during storms (), a. . Radiation from the sun causes land to gain thermal energy. The air above the land also gains thermal energy and expands, becoming less dense and rising Wind Tunnel, wind tun·nel / wind/ • n. a tunnel-like apparatus for producing an airstream of known velocity past models of aircraft, buildings, etc., in order to Wind Shear , Wind shear is the difference in speed and/or direction between two points (either areas or layers) of air in the atmosphere Local wind definition, one of a number of winds that are influenced predominantly by the topographic features of a relatively small region. See more
The United States is home to one of the largest and fastest-growing wind markets in the world. To stay competitive in this sector, the Energy Department invests in wind research and development projects, both on land and offshore, to advance technology innovations, create job opportunities and boost economic growth. Moving forward, the U.S. wind industry remains a critical part of the Energy. Wind energy refers to the process of creating electricity using the wind or air flows that occur naturally in the earth's atmosphere. Modern wind turbines are used to capture kinetic energy from the wind and generate electricity Wind definition is - a natural movement of air of any velocity; especially : the earth's air or the gas surrounding a planet in natural motion horizontally. How to use wind in a sentence Wind is a spin stabilized spacecraft launched with a Delta II rock on November 1, 1994. After several orbits through the magnetosphere, Wind was placed in a halo orbit around the L1 Lagrange point -- more than 200 Re upstream of Earth -- in early 2004 to observe the unperturbed solar wind that is about to impact the magnetosphere of Earth
Wind-driven waves, or surface waves, are created by the friction between wind and surface water. As wind blows across the surface of the ocean or a lake, the continual disturbance creates a wave crest. These types of waves are found globally across the open ocean and along the coast Solar wind is a constant stream of plasma and particles emanating from the sun. Fortunately, Earth's magnetic field protects us from its harmful effects Apr 5, 2013 - Explore Tracy's board Kindergarten Wind/Weather Unit, followed by 174 people on Pinterest. See more ideas about weather unit, kindergarten, wind
The wind scorpion is a colloquial name for a group of arthropods under the order Solifugae in the class Arachnida. Also known as sun spiders or camel spiders, the order Solifugae includes over 1,000 Science Trend A wind farm, which is used to make clean energy. A wind farm is a collection of windmills or turbines which are used to generate electrical power through their mechanical motions as they are pushed by the wind. Both Europe and the United States have large numbers of wind farms, and the technology is also found on other continents The cups catch the wind and rotate. The greater the speed of wind, the faster the cups rotate. At the base of the anemometer is a scale. The speed of wind (in kilometres per hour) is read from this scale. The anemometer is installed on a tall most where the wind blows freely around it The fleet of four identical Cluster spacecraft is currently investigating the Earth's magnetic environment and its interaction with the solar wind in three dimensions. Science output from the Cluster mission greatly advances our knowledge of space plasma physics, space weather and the Sun-Earth connection and has been key in improving the modelling of the magnetosphere and understanding its.
When your second wind kicks in, which takes roughly 10 to 15 minutes to happen, give or take five minutes or so (generally, that is; some people may have to wait much longer), it's because your body has stopped focusing on expelling excess carbon dioxide and started taking in more oxygen Wind is a vast potential source of renewable energy. Winds are generated by complex mechanisms involving the rotation of the Earth, the heat capacity of the Sun, the cooling effect of the oceans and polar ice caps, temperature gradients between land and sea, and the physical effects of mountains and other obstacles Harnessing power from the wind is one of the cleanest and most sustainable ways to generate electricity as it produces no toxic pollution or global warming emissions. Wind is also abundant, inexhaustible, and affordable, which makes it a viable and large-scale alternative to fossil fuels Wind velocity (mi/hr) is - (minus) if it is a tailwind, + (plus) if it is a headwind (relative to the ground). Weight is in pounds. Grade is the angle of the slope. 0 is flat, 90 is a vertical wall. Click on the Calculate button. Notice the drag force and power required to keep you moving at a constant velocity
Class 7 Science Solved Q&A Nutrition in Plants Nutrition in Animals Fibre to Fabric Heat Acids, Bases and Salts Physical and Chemical Changes Weather,Climate And Adaptation Wind Storms and Cyclones Soil Respiration in Organisms Transportation in Animals and Plants Reproduction in Plants Motion and Time Electric Current and its Effect Light. The wind turbines used by utility companies to provide power to a grid are usually placed in groups or rows, called wind farms, to take full advantage of windy areas. Follow Elizabeth Palermo on.
Explain what solar wind is and how its related to the formation of Aurora Borealis. Draw a diagram to support your explanation. *Response times vary by subject and question complexity. Median response time is 34 minutes and may be longer for new subjects. Q: Describe cultural commonalities and. Release and Launch. To get the kite airborne, first of all, you need to provide it with enough lift to counteract its own weight. Although there are numerous factors (e.g.,the shape of the kite, its motion in the air, quality of air, etc.) that affect the amount of lift produced in a kite, the principal contributor is the velocity of air that goes by the kite Wind is an object that is affected by the Coriolis Effect. What happens to winds in the Northern Hemisphere as a results of the Coriolis Effect? _____. 11. Use the animation at the following website to help you find out how the Coriolis Effect affects wind: Earth Science Wind/Pressure/Weather WebQuest Author: Bogan High Schoo Wind is produced as a result of giant convection currents in the Earth's atmosphere, which are driven by heat energy from the Sun. This means that the kinetic energy in wind is a renewable energy.. Founder and currently Executive Editor of Science-Based Medicine Steven Novella, MD is an academic clinical neurologist at the Yale University School of Medicine. He is also the host and producer of the popular weekly science podcast, The Skeptics' Guide to the Universe, and the author of the NeuroLogicaBlog, a daily blog that covers news and issues in neuroscience, but also general science. The wind speed of a devastating Category 5 hurricane can top over 150 miles per hour (241km/hour.) Now imagine another kind of wind with an average speed of 0.87 million miles per hour (1.4 million km/hour.) Welcome to the wind that begins in our Sun and doesn't stop until after it reaches the edge of the heliosphere: the solar wind


Purim Quick Facts
Meaning of Hebrew Name: “Lots” (as in “casting lots” – not as in “lots of something”)
English Name: Purim
Western Calendar Month: February/March
Jewish Calendar Date: Adar 14
Establishment of Purim: Fifth century BC; Esther 9:20-22
Purpose of Purim
The scene: a king tossing and turning for fear that his lovely queen is conspiring against him with his chief advisor. A queen so worried over the king’s plan to put to death her people that she barges into his inner chamber unannounced, looking lovelier than ever. Two advisors to the king are getting ready for a showdown – the town (Persia) is only big enough for the one of them. Haman, hell-bent on the destruction of the Jews, is besmeared with waste matter and wincing in pain by the end of this battle. Mordecai, his Jewish enemy, is clad in purple robes, majestically seated atop the royal horse, freshly bathed and coiffed by Haman himself. The difference could hardly be more pronounced.
If the scene sounds only half-familiar, that’s because it is. Although Megillat Esther (“the Scroll of Esther”) lines up with the basics of the plot described above, the colorful embroideries came later; they were added in the tractate Megillah of the Talmud and in other commentaries.
Jewish literature contains a wealth of such embellishments. Why? More than any other story in Jewish history (except, perhaps, for Passover and Hanukkah), the story of Esther inspires further storytelling and bears repeating. The great Jewish traditions of storytelling and humor come to the fore on Purim, the feast day commemorating Esther’s and Mordecai’s defeat of Haman’s plot to annihilate the Jews of ancient Persia. The great commandment on Purim is that we “proclaim the miracle” by reading Megillat Esther, banqueting together, sending gifts, and giving portions to the poor. The revelry takes other forms too, from dressing up in wild costumes to watching the Purimspiel (Purim play), which brings the story of Esther to life.
Origin of Purim
Megillat Esther starts with the unlikely fate of a Jewish girl living in the Persian Empire.1 King Ahasuerus (Xerxes2) takes Esther, the cousin of the Jewish advisor Mordecai, to be his new queen after deposing Queen Vashti. On Mordecai’s advice, Esther hides her Jewish ancestry from Xerxes until the wicked counselor Haman hatches a plot against the life of the Jews, obliging her to speak out for her people.
The most famous lines of the story come when Mordecai persuades Esther to go to the king unannounced, a capital offense:
Then Mordecai told them [the messengers] to reply to Esther, “Do not think to yourself that in the king’s palace you will escape any more than all the other Jews. For if you keep silent at this time, relief and deliverance will rise for the Jews from another place, but you and your father’s house will perish. And who knows whether you have not come to the kingdom for such a time as this?”
Then Esther told them to reply to Mordecai, “Go, gather all the Jews to be found in Susa, and hold a fast on my behalf, and do not eat or drink for three days, night or day. I and my young women will also fast as you do. Then I will go to the king, though it is against the law, and if I perish, I perish.” (Esther 4:13-16)
By their wit and wile – though behind the scenes orchestrated by God – Esther and Mordecai foiled Haman’s plot. Following Haman’s execution and the deliverance of the Jews, Esther and Mordecai established a feast for future generations to celebrate their people’s survival for “their sorrow was turned into joy and their mourning into a day of celebration” (Esther 9:22).
And Mordecai recorded these things and sent letters to all the Jews… obliging them to keep the fourteenth day of the month Adar and also the fifteenth day of the same, year by year, as the days on which the Jews got relief from their enemies… that they should make them days of feasting and gladness, days for sending gifts of food to one another and gifts to the poor. (Esther 9:20-22)
Thus Purim was born. Purim is so called because Haman cast lots (purim) to determine the most propitious date for implementing his planned genocide, but the verses about the casting of lots are brief and vague. We read in Esther 3:7: “They cast Pur (that is, they cast lots).” The medieval rabbi Rashi comments: “Whoever cast it, cast it, and the verse does not specify who. This is an elliptical verse.” He interprets the phrase that follows – “that is, the lot” – this way: “Scripture explains: and what is the pur? That is the lot. He cast lots [to determine] in which month he would succeed.”3 Because of Esther’s faithfulness in relying on God’s guidance and her courage to speak to the king on behalf of her people, Haman was foiled, the day of his dreamed-of success of annihilation of the Jewish people became the day of the Jews’ deliverance from death to life – Purim.
How Purim is Observed
The Purim Feast:
The Purim feast is a time of conviviality and merrymaking. It must take place on the day of Purim, not on the evening before (Megillah 7b) on account of the mandated “days of feasting and gladness” (Esther 9:20-22). The rabbis explain: “[We read in connection with Purim] gladness and feasting and a good day; ‘gladness’: this teaches that it is forbidden on these days to mourn; ‘feasting’: this teaches that it is forbidden on them to fast; ‘a good day’: this teaches that it is forbidden on them to do work” (Megillah 5b). Fasting, mourning, and work are all swept aside on this day of celebration and revelry.4
Proclaiming the Miracle:
Most important of all, however is not eating and drinking but reading Megillat Esther and thereby “proclaiming the miracle.” This most commonly takes place in synagogue, where the Scroll of Esther (an individual scroll, usually without being combined with any other portion of Scripture5) is read aloud in a raucous, buzzing atmosphere. Congregants cheer and laugh or stamp their feet and shout and boo whenever the name “Haman” is mentioned. (This is done on the basis of Exodus 17:14, where God tells us to “blot out the memory of Amalek,” and so of his descendant Haman.)
Despite the apparent chaos of the Megillah reading, the Mishnah and the Talmud set down elaborate rules for the proper proclamation of the miracle. We must read the Megillah from beginning to end (some rabbis disagree about where to start); we mustn’t take long breaks; we mustn’t read it backwards… even the parchment and ink of the scroll must be up to snuff!
In light of these various rules, some so obvious as to go without saying, it behooves us to remember the spirit of “proclaiming the miracle.” One rabbi comments: “When the text says, thou shalt not forget, the injunction against mental forgetfulness is already given. What then am I to make of ‘remember’? This must mean, by utterance [lit. “with the mouth”]. Proclaim the miracle” (Megillah 18a). It is not enough not to forget; remembrance goes a step further: we must fasten our minds on the history and tell it out loud. Only then do we pay God sufficient homage for rescuing His people from the clutches of Haman.
Sending Food and Giving to the Poor:
The famous Jewish commentator Maimonides placed the book of Esther on an equal footing with the Torah, as one of the imperishable books of the Hebrew Bible. His love of Purim was in no way exclusionary – rather, he stressed that all Jews should be able to take part. We see in Maimonides’ Mishneh Torah his concern that all members of the community, rich and poor, do their bit in celebrating Purim:
Similarly, a person is obligated to send two portions of meat, two other cooked dishes, or two other foods to a friend, as implied by Esther 9:22, ‘sending portions of food one to another’…. Whoever sends portions to many friends is praiseworthy. If one does not have the means to send presents of food to a friend, one should exchange one’s meal with him.6
On Purim, Jews greet one another by sending portions of food, often in the form of gift baskets full of sweets and nuts and fruits, called mishloach manot in Hebrew or shalach manos in Yiddish. In this manner, the feast of Purim spills out of the home into the community at large. No delicacies or lavish spending necessary – two poor friends can just trade food and thus “send portions,” a way for the less fortunate to fulfill the commandment. Maimonides adds that one must give alms on Purim to those who don’t even have enough to eat for themselves.
One is obligated to distribute charity to the poor on the day of Purim. At the very least, to give each of two poor people one present, be it money, cooked dishes, or other foods…. We should not be discriminating in selecting the recipients of these Purim gifts. Instead, one should give to whomever [sic] stretches out his hand. It is preferable for a person to be more liberal with his donations to the poor than to be lavish in his preparation of the Purim feast or in sending portions to his friends. For there is no greater and more splendid happiness than to gladden the hearts of the poor, the orphans, the widows, and the converts.7
Giving alms far outweighs the preparation of a lavish feast or gratuitous consumption. Feeding the hungry and helping the poor in their distress is a commandment that must be carried out at all times; even on a day of carefree revelry, we must remember the fatherless and widows in their affliction.
Special Synagogue Readings for Purim
Torah Portion: Exodus 17:8-16 (the Israelites defeat the Amalekites, from which tribe Haman is descended).
No haftarah portion, as the central non-Pentateuchal reading of Purim is, of course, Megillat Esther.
Purim, like most biblical Jewish holidays, is not what it was in ancient times; rather, the encrustations of centuries of tradition and interpretation have lent the holiday an evolving character all its own. Many of these traditions derive from the Talmud, the chief Jewish interpretive work of the post-exilic period.
All kinds of embellishments were made to the story of Esther in the Talmud, including angelic interventions and even scatological details. Esther gets a divine makeover from angels to please Ahasuerus: “R. Joshua b. Korha said: Esther was sallow, but a thread of grace was drawn about her” (Megillah 13a). Haman was a former “slave sold for loaves of bread,” bought by Mordecai during one of the wars of the Jews against the Amalekites (Megillah 15b). When Haman led Mordecai before Ahasuerus, he had to give him a haircut because Esther closed all the bathhouses, and Mordecai wouldn’t come into Ahasuerus’ presence untrimmed. When mounting his horse, Mordecai asked Haman for help and kicked him on his way up. Haman’s daughter, seeing Haman leading the horse, mistook him for Mordecai and dumped a chamberpot on him; realizing her mistake, she fell off a roof for shame.8 All of these myths lighten the story and infuse Purim with a dose of hilarity.
According to one rabbi, “It is the duty of a man to mellow himself [with wine] on Purim until he cannot tell the difference between ‘cursed be Haman’ and ‘blessed be Mordecai’” (Megillah 7b). So “mellow” did the Jews become on Purim that the rabbis tell a cautionary tale about drinking to excess: “Rabbah and R. Zera joined together in a Purim feast. They became mellow [i.e., drunk], and Rabbah arose and cut R. Zera’s throat. On the next day he prayed on his behalf and revived him. Next year he said, Will your honour come and we will have the Purim feast together. He replied: A miracle does not take place on every occasion” (Megillah 7b).
Not only abundant drink, but also abundant food sets Purim apart. Of Purim’s delicacies, kreplach (tri-cornered dumplings filled with meat) and hamantaschen (tri-cornered cookies with a fruit filling) take the cake (pun intended). These beloved foods may represent any number of things: the shape of the lots; Haman’s triangular ears; a dunce-ish hat Haman wore (an invention of the Purimspiel), which we gobble down in revenge; or even God, hidden inside the events of Esther!
Dressing up has also become part and parcel of Purim celebrations, originating with the Italian carnivalesque attire Jews wore during Purim in the Renaissance. Why do we dress up? Perhaps because God “disguised” Himself in the book of Esther, never being named but pulling the strings all along. Perhaps because Haman changed costumes so often, going from a slave to a chief advisor to a hanged man. Dressing up also reminds us of Mordecai’s many “costume changes” in the book of Esther – from regular courtly dress, to ashes and sackcloth, to a royal purple tunic. By gussying ourselves up in over-the-top costumes, we act out the fast-changing fortunes of the Jews and of Haman in the Book of Esther.
Purimspiel, or the Purim play, which originated in Eastern Europe and has spread worldwide, makes light of the story. Performers and audiences alike clad in over-the-top costumes draw on the rich storehouse of details mentioned in Jewish literature for humor and color. During Purim plays and throughout Purim, we practice various cruelties on Haman. In olden times, Jews would burn effigies of him, though attacks from Christians led to the adoption of a substitute practice: beating objects with the name of Haman written on them. Noisemaking, a longstanding feature of folk cultures, is meant to drive away evil spirits like Haman’s. Many Jews even go so far as to write Haman’s name on the soles of their feet so they can “stomp on him” during Purim. In brief, a rich tapestry of traditions from around the world makes Purim the brightest and most colorful of Jewish holidays.
Spiritual Application of Purim
Some Purim traditions stray from biblical ideals: drunkenness and stomping on one’s enemies, for example. Yet when we return to the contents of the book itself, Purim invites reflection on God. For far too long, Esther has been wrongly viewed as an unspiritual, even unsavory, book of the Bible. Martin Luther infamously complained: “I am so hostile to this book [2 Maccabees] and to Esther that I could wish that they did not exist at all; for they judaize too greatly and have much pagan impropriety.”9 In contrast, the rabbis of the Talmud so esteemed the book of Esther that they ferreted out sometimes fanciful references to it in other parts of the Hebrew Bible. For example, the Talmud traces Psalm 22 and its famous words, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” and “Deliver my soul from the sword, my precious life from the power of the dog,” to Esther in her distress, even though David wrote the psalm.
Aside from disparaging its content, some have leveled accusations against the book’s authenticity, claiming that Megillat Esther is nothing more than a myth or tall tale. These attacks on the veracity of Esther have subsided in recent years, as scholars once more reassert the overall legitimacy and historicity of the story (something Jews traditionally never had reason to doubt).
Others have criticized Purim on different grounds, attributing to it an overweening sense of national pride and wiliness. These claims rest on the bogus belief that when Esther and Mordecai outwitted the genocidal Haman, they portrayed cunning and guile rather than bravery. Unfortunately, many objections to the story of Esther and the celebration of Purim have often been bound up with anti-Semitic sentiment. Indeed, many churches avoid the book of Esther altogether, sometimes venturing the lame excuse that the word “God” does not appear in the book of Esther and so it must be of no religious significance.
Above all, many find in Megillat Esther an indication that the events of history are orchestrated behind the scenes for good by the one character not named in the book: God Himself. Though unmentioned, many see Him as front and center – in the events of Esther’s and Mordecai’s time, and in the preservation of the Jewish people throughout history. We are reminded in the book of Esther that God orchestrates the details of our lives even when we cannot see His hand. Like Job, we can say: “I go forward, but he is not there, and backward, but I do not behold him; he turns to the right hand, but I do not see him. But he knows the way that I take; when he has tried me, I shall come out as gold” (Job 23:8–10). And perhaps, like Esther, we have been purposely placed in unusual circumstances (for such a time as this) to be a light of His love to others.
Chat With Us
What traditions do you celebrate on Purim? Do you dress up and watch a Purim play? Do you read the book of Esther? We’d love to hear your answers to these questions and your reflection on this most joyous of holidays. Either send us a message or click on the chat tab on the bottom right-hand of the page to get in touch. Chag Purim Sameach!
1. The synopsis in this section is based purely on the Scriptures, not on rabbinical commentaries as above.
2. See transcript of Christine Hayes, “Lecture 24 – Alternative Visions: Esther, Ruth, and Jonah [December 6, 2006],” Open Yale Courses, accessed July 24, 2017, https://oyc.yale.edu/religious-studies/rlst-145/lecture-24 (30-second mark): “There’s no x in the Hebrew alphabet – this is Ahasuerus, which is Xerxes.”
3. Rashi’s Commentary on Esther 3:7, Chabad.org, accessed July 24, 2017, http://www.chabad.org/library/bible_cdo/aid/16476/jewish/Chapter-3.htm#showrashi=true<=primary..?
4. Some rabbis debated whether there was an obligation not to work on Purim.
5. Megillah19a: “Rab Judah said in the name of Samuel: If one reads the Megillah from a volume containing the rest of Scriptures, he has not performed his obligation,” i.e., because he does not sufficiently proclaim the miracle. [Exception: if it’s about even with the admixed material.] Because of this teaching, many Megillot (scrolls of the book of Esther) have been copied, some decorated with intricate illustrations.
6. Maimonides, Mishneh Torah, trans. Eliyahu Touger, Chabad.org, accessed July 24, 2017, http://www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/952007/jewish/Megillah-vChanukah-Chapter-Two.htm. “Megillah and Chanukah” 2:15.
7. Ibid., 2:16.
8. All of these details drawn from Megillah 16a.
9. Table Talk, XXIV