Weather and Anna Mani

You may have seen thermometers hanging on the walls of a school laboratory, a doctor's clinic or a hospital. They are room thermometers, and they give an approximate idea of the room's temperature.

Weather reports in newspapers, on TV or on a phone give the maximum and minimum air temperature of the day. Note them down for ten days and you will see they do not stay the same. Weather depends on several things, so these temperatures change every day. Generally, as summer comes the temperature rises, and in winter it falls. That is why wet clothes dry fast in summer and slowly in winter.

Air temperature is an important part of the weather. It is measured at weather stations all over the world, and this data, along with other measurements, is used to make weather forecasts.

Meet Anna Mani (1918–2001), an Indian scientist known as the 'Weather Woman of India'. She invented and built a large number of instruments for measuring the weather. Because of her work, India relied less on other nations for such instruments.