This was recently mentioned in an SLN thread. I have put together a simple spreadsheet to plot wave buoy data at the Sevenstones lightship. Using a spreadsheet to harvest the latest data in this way is a compelling prospect, however at present I can’t think of a practical application!
Open the spreadsheet and select “enable macros”. After a few seconds the graph will change automatically to reflect the current readings from the lightship.
Click on chart to download spreadsheet
Sevenstones lightship
© National Maritime Museum, London
Thanks to Rowser for his assistance with the method. This page is a helpful intoduction to web queries.
A colleague at school pointed out that a good use (and fairly obviously the reason why this feature was originally implemented) would be to keep track of stocks shares and commodity prices.
A lesson on energy, for example could start with a spreadsheet on recent oil price changes – students would have to suggest reasons for fluctuations.
I knew there would be a practical application for the classroom!
Another conversation has indicated that it might be possible to find a river with an online discharge data feed. This could lead to an investigation into lag times by creating a spreadsheet that compares discharge data with local rainfall.