Modelling the Albedo Effect

Different land surfaces have different albedo. Dark surfaces absorb light while lighter surfaces reflect more light. There is a nice youtube video showing how different coloured ice melts at different rates. I would use this as a stimulus to have students plan a controlled experiment.

Things to consider:

In order to encourage students to remember the 5x5 rule for experimentation, students should be thinking about changing their independent variable five times, e.g. five different colours of ice with five repeats of each.

What data will be collected? Total time? Time for mass change - water to be drained away? Height every time t intervals.?

Use secondary data to support conclusions. Here's a starting point from Climatedatainfo.