A new technique giving significant drag reduction in turbulent shear flows has been proposed by using the buoyancy effect to generate periodic spanwise motion. Such spanwise motion can be obtained by arranging heating and cooling strips periodically aligned in the spanwise direction of a vertical channel, where the streamwise mean flow is perpendicular to the gravity vector The strip size has been changed in order to obtain the optimum size corresponding to the maximum drag reduction. The bulk Reynolds number, $ Re_{m} = U_{m} delta / u $ is fixed at 2270 while Grashof numbers is changed between $10^{6}$ to $10^{7}$. As Grashof number increases, considerable drag reduction can be obtained, At the highest Grashof number, an optimum strip size of about 250 wail units gives drag reduction of about 35$\%$. The greater the Grashof number, the smaller the strip size attains the maximum drag reduction.