Well now I've returned from the South Pole, finished with my stint working with the IceCube team.
What I miss about the South Pole:
Really, the cold is not bad, in fact it's kind of nice - it's a fun ritual to put on all the layers. Not so much fun when you realize you missed one!
I will miss the people! Everyone I met had such an interesting back story, and everyone seemed so engaged in the science going on at the pole. The Sunday Science Lectures were well-attended with interesting questions from the audience. I think the type of person that would seek out a job in Antarctica is a breed apart.
And most of all, I will miss the sauna. Heating up your body until you can barely walk, then running outside to -30°C air to cool off... it's no 300 club but still quite a way to shock...
Two things I will miss about being in Antarctica: cool ice crystals, and amazing atmospheric light shows.
I was not in Antarctica during the winter - in which case I would have been fortunate enough to see the Aurora Australis - the Southern Lights. While I was there, the sun was in the sky the entire time. But this gave me the opportunity to witness other amazing effects we rarely (if ever) see in the U.S. Every day, if it was a little cloudy, I would keep my eyes on the sky to see if the clouds would give way to some amazing new effect I hadn't seen before!
Haloes are similar to rainbows. They are caused by the same effect of light waves - refraction, in which the light waves come into a new medium and change their speed and direction. In a rainbow, the sunlight enters a raindrop...
In our previous episode, we saw our valiant heroes attempt to make ice cream from a secret recipe, using only south pole snow (at -28°F) to freeze it into a delicious soft-serve consistency. It took approximately 12 minutes, considerably longer than it took in the classroom using regular ice and rock salt. What caused this unexpected (at least for me!) result? Watch and learn, little one - watch and learn...
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In the classroom, the salt melted the ice into water at about +28°F, which was cold enough to transfer the heat out of the cream mix. Liquid is a far better conductor of heat than air, so when I tried it with snow, which is primarily air trapped in the ice crystals, my hypothesis is that the air merely insulated the cream mixture and prevented it from freezing quickly.
So...
Almost all the material that gets to the south pole is transported using LC-130 Hercules planes ("Hercs"). Every day, Hercs come in, drop off equipment, people, and fuel, and then take off again for McMurdo, carrying people and any waste stuff that needs to be hauled out.
But it turns out, there are a couple of other ways that the South Pole can receive supplies. And I was lucky enough to see both of these occur in the same week!
The most obvious way to get stuff to the Pole would be to transport it by land somehow. Every once in a while, a convoy of vehicles arrives overland from McMurdo station, hauling large sleds of fuel and equipment and food. It takes about a month for the convoy to reach the Pole, but they can haul a tremendous amount of stuff so it is reasonably fuel...
As I mentioned in the previous post - the IceTop sensors are now all in the tanks, the tanks are filled and freezing into solid crystal-clear ice around the DOMs embedded in them. We did some work today to open up the doors on the tanks and install sun shields, to allow the water to freeze faster without overloading the DOMs with light. A new, previously unseen problem reared its ugly head when one of the relief hoses sprung a leak, so we had to fix that and add more water to the tank so it would be at the proper level. But as with previous issues, once it was found, it was relatively short work to repair it and get things right back on track.
And now, since IceTop is essentially done, I was put onto a IceCube string deployment team, this time not merely as an observer but as an...
Almost everything down here is known via acronyms - abbreviations that sometimes spell out something clever, or sometimes just random codes. This especially goes for research projects, with the exception of IceCube - which just means a cube of ice.
I already wrote a journal about the ARO, but today's topic is a pair of similar research projects, SPT and BICEP, that study the cosmic microwave background radiation.
For the non-physicists out there, a quick rundown on this "cosmic microwave background radiation"... Way back about 13.7 billion years ago, the Big Bang happened (or so goes the consensus of astrophysicists who know of these things). Lots of stuff happened really quickly, such as the universe being formed. The universe was a ball of super-hot particles that expanded...
Today's my last day at the Pole. I'll hop on a C-130 at around noon and fly back to McMurdo. Last night, the South Pole Telescope hosted a "ladies night" event with music and dancing and tours of the telescope - that was a lot of fun, a nice celebration to bring my month-long visit to the South Pole to a close.
This morning, at about 4 am, a crane prepared to lift the top of the old Dome station as the first stages of demolition. This is the end of a long and storied era of the South Pole Station!
The first South Pole Station (the Dome was the second station) was built in 1956-1957, as part of the International Geophysical Year. It was used continuously, even in the winters housing around 20 people for the cold dark months and maybe twice that number of people during the...
After setting up and filling 14 IceTop stations, we are almost done with the season. Here are some numbers:
14 IceTop stations (there are 20 IceCube holes planned for this year, but not all of them get IceTop stations)
28 tanks, each with a freeze control unit and contactor to remove dissolved gases
600 gallons of water in each tank, for a total of 16,000 gallons
2 digital optical modules for each tank, for a grand total of 56 DOMs.
At this point, we are cleaning up a few loose ends, preparing the tanks for the next two months as the water freezes from the top down. Even thought it is -25 degrees Celsius, it takes about 53 days for the ice to freeze inside the tank, because once the top layer freezes, the ice layer insulates the water below and slows down the freezing process.
I leave...
The nature of the work being done for IceCube down here at the South Pole is not really research - the research in general is done at the 30 or so partner institutions around the world, based on the data collected by IceCube. We are working hard to get the sensors deployed into the ice to allow us to gather that data. I have focused my journals on how those sensors get deployed, and how this array is supposed to detect neutrinos. But what do we do with that information?
First off, a brief note about the data already gathered. The first strings of the IceCube detector and first tanks of the IceTop array were placed in the ice in early 2005. Since then, each year more strings and tanks have been deployed. But even though the entire telescope will not be finished until 2011, we are...
The South Pole and the North Pole are unusual in that they never have 24-hour "day and night" cycles. During the southern summer, the South Pole is always tilted towards the sun, bathing it in light for 6 months. During the southern winter, the South Pole is always tilted away from the sun, leaving it in darkness for another six months. Same holds true for the North Pole but opposite seasons - southern summer is the same time as northern winter.
Sunlight 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, for 6 months of the year might sound cool. And it is! But it also messes with your sleep cycles. Under normal circumstances, your brain tunes itself to the cycle of light and dark you see each day and night. As light fades, your brain expects sleep; and when the sun comes back up, your brain...
Here at the south pole, many groups are doing scientific research on a wide variety of topics. IceCube is looking at neutrinos from space; there are several other research projects involving cosmic background radiation from space as well. But the other day I visited a site where the research is a little closer to home. The ARO (Atmospheric Research Observatory), run but NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration), takes data on Earth's atmosphere and tracks various cycles and changes in the air we breathe.
The South Pole is unique in many ways, and the ARO facility takes advantage of the fact that the wind almost always blows in from one direction, and there's nothing in that direction for a thousand miles. No sources of pollution, no living things, just air blowing along...
We are continuing to keep up a great pace on the IceTop DOMs (light sensors) and tanks. At this point, all the DOMs are in place for this year's schedule of IceTop, and most of the electronic interfaces are in place as well. We are filling the tanks rapidly and should easily be finished by the time I leave next Friday.
And all this despite some more difficulties!
At some point, a whole series of DOMs was exposed to high voltage at a time when they were also exposed to direct sunlight. The photomultiplier tubes on these DOMs are so sensitive to light that they can detect a single photon, so trillions of uninvited photons could overload the circuitry and cause the DOM to malfunction. So after some panicking and hypostulating, the DOM testers ran some tests and it seems that the DOMs...
Water is one of the most essential chemicals to life on Earth. Water is a precious resource, and we tend to take it for granted in the US. We enjoy clean drinking water straight from the faucet, take long hot showers, flush our toilets, water our lawns, wash our cars (and watch it flow down the street into our rivers and streams...). Not to mention all the water used for industrial and agricultural processes!
Here at the south pole, water is a precious resource to a much higher degree. But wait, aren't we sitting on top of 2 miles of frozen water? Yes! But, the key word there is "frozen". You can't drink ice, you can't shower in it, you can't cook with it. To use it, you must generate heat to melt it. Which uses another precious commodity here: fuel.
Fuel at the South...
The sun was hidden behind clouds most of the day today. I had been hoping to get outside and take some photos of the area around the South Pole Station. But when weather like this happens, the sunlight is very diffuse, and pictures of white snow with white light and white clouds generally look like a lot of plain boring white.
Finally in the early evening (remember, the sun stays at the same elevation above the horizon all day and night, just moves in a circle around the sky so "evening" just means when my watch says 7 pm...) the sun broke through the clouds a bit and gave me a chance to explore. I ventured out the "back" of the station, past Summer Camp where a lot of the staff live, and into the Cargo Berms...
The Berms are literally cold storage for anything and...
"We are the morale committee at South Pole," says James Brown, South Pole Executive Chef and nine-year Pole veteran, about the mission of the South Pole Station galley. "Our goal is to provide good food at every meal, with a smile and great attitude toward the community and each other." Each and every day, James and his staff of 16 prepare four meals (breakfast, lunch, dinner, and MidRats - "midnight rations" for the night crews) for the 250 people in the South Pole Station during the summer season.
I must admit I was concerned about the food before my trip. At the South Pole, fresh produce, canned goods, frozen goods, every bit of food must come from thousands of miles away, by ship or plane to McMurdo and then on board a C-130 the rest of the way. ...
Yesterday was a breeze in terms of filling the IceTop tanks. Today was another story entirely! Everything seemed to go wrong.
The first minor issue came when we found that one of the IceTop tanks had a layer of dirt and ice in the bottom. When we fill the tanks to be frozen, any dirt can cloud the water causing problems for the sensors. No problem, clean it out, right? but the dirt had frozen into a tough layer on the bottom, and we'd need to get in with some hot water and scrub it out fast. Before we could do this, however, we ran into another problem.
The second big hiccup came when we hooked up a set of the Freeze Control Units and found they did not communicate back to the main control computer. They are able to run on automatic mode for now, but for gathering data we still...
The season is ramping up for installation of the IceCube detector strings, and also for the deployment of the IceTop surface sensor tanks. Today was a big day in that we were able to fill our first two tanks, getting them started on the long road to becoming crystal clear ice. Unfortunately, the IceCube detector strings may be a little delayed due to a faulty generator. But these guys are pros, they are working out different options that will allow them to remain on schedule with minimal risk.
One thing about the IceCube project - it is HUGE! It is the largest research project ever attempted in Antarctica, with approximately $300 million in funds from the US and additional from other nations and organizations. And unlike most enormous projects along these lines, it is apparently on...
Going back in time a little bit... picture yourself in a place where the horizon is as flat as the sea, except brilliant white and frozen... and yet inside, it's toasty warm and the holidays are upon us. We celebrated Thanksgiving down here on Saturday instead of Thursday; this makes it easier for all the various shifts of workers to get together.
Because there are 250 people here, and we wouldn't all fit in the galley at once, we had to sign up for dinner shifts early in the week - I signed up for the earliest one (the only one still available) so dinner was at 4 pm. We were also encouraged to sign up to volunteer as kitchen help for meal preparation. I of course signed up for pie making duty!
Friday night, the night before Thanksgiving, about 30 of us met in the galley, and the...
I must give a shout out to Mrs. Ratliff's classes in South Carolina - they have been awesome at giving me ideas for experiments. They suggested the beard experiment (the south pole portion of which is 9 days in so far!) and also making ice cream, including the recipe and procedures! They also sent a school flag nicely decorated and signed, to get a photo at the Pole - I'll send that in e-mail when I get a good chance!
Here is a video I put together of the experience! enjoy, and try it out for yourself, it's surprisingly easy (and, unsurprisingly, a bit messy).
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First off, as a science experiment, I must admit I didn't really follow the rules too closely. In a scientific experiment you'd like to only change one thing (independent variable) and see how another thing (dependent...
Things are different down here at the south pole. Temperatures well below freezing; sunlight 24 hours a day (this time of year at least); 10,000+ feet altitude; very dry air... hard work in these conditions compounds all that and the human body isn't used to all this kind of stress! So, what kinds of things happen? I don't know, I'm a physics teacher!
But, I can take some data and see if there are any noticeable changes in how my body works. So, I brought with me a few simple tools:
a thermometer (that uses infrared radiation to tell temperatures) so I can measure my body temperature
a blood pressure cuff and a stethoscope, so I can measure my blood pressure
a watch, so I can calculate my heart rate
I don't know how the extreme conditions here will affect these, but I took some...
Last journal I was looking forward to snowmobile training! ohh yeahh! Oh well, it was just a few of us standing around a snowmobile while the trainer basically told us how not to wreck the engine or get ourselves killed. No snowmobile riding at all! I personally believe in the power of hands-on teaching as much as possible... this is no way to give a snowmobile class!
But, that afternoon it turns out, we needed to transport some material around. So, now that I was "trained," I got to drive a snowmobile for the first time!
A little aside here: during the Bush administration, there was a lot of talk about snowmobile traffic in Yellowstone National Park. People wanted them banned from the park, other people said no way, and I don't know if it's even been resolved yet. I...
Yesterday I woke up to experience my first official day on the job. Monday, I had enough time to recover a bit, get plenty of water, and get a decent night's sleep. OK, down time is OVER!Tuesday morning, I woke up early to post a journal, grab a tasty breakfast at the galley, and then head off to the 8 am IceCube planning meeting. There I met a lot of the people responsible for making the IceCube project become a reality, most of whom you will meet in this and future posts.
My main work is on the IceTop portion of the IceCube project, in which we are installing tanks on the surface, next to each of the 2.5 km deep holes for the IceCube strings of light sensors. Each IceCube string will get 2 IceTop tanks, each tank gets 2 DOMs (light sensors). The IceTop sensors will study cosmic...
This morning, the sky was the clearest it had been while I'd been in McMurdo. The wind had died down, the snow had stopped falling, a perfect day to fly out! So, at 7:30 the IceCube group and I met at the "bag drag" building where we had taken our luggage the night before, hopped on a transport van to the runway, and boarded a C-130 out of McMurdo. This is a smaller cousin of the C-17 that brought us to McMurdo in the first place. Christchurch-McMurdo on a C-17 took about 5 hours; on a C-130 it would have taken 8 hours. Fortunately, the South Pole is closer so the trip, even on a C-130, only takes about 3 hours.
As before, the flight was generally uneventful, as you would generally prefer flights to be. As time wore on, it gradually became colder in the cargo/passenger...
The bright light of the Antarctic sun forced me to pull my goggles off my forehead and over my eyes. The main cabin of the C-17 had been fairly dim, and now the sun gleamed white off the stark Ross Ice Sheet upon which we had landed. The trip from Christchurch was relatively uneventful, though I did take a tour around the plane including a few minutes up in the cockpit as we crossed the boundary from ocean to ice-covered land. The military plane was exceptionally loud, so in addition to the ECW we had to wear, we also had earplugs for the entire flight.
All the passengers were greeted at McMurdo by large transport vehicles which took us up to the Swiss Chalet, in which we received our introduction briefing and got our housing assignments. Building 166, room 207, along with some of the...
Alarm: 3:30 am. I, along with all the other researchers, drillers, painters, janitors, and other support staff, need to be to the US Antarctic Program building at 5 am this morning to get ready to board a C-17 to McMurdo Station. I am tired but adrenaline gets me going in no time...
The past couple of days I have been in Christchurch, New Zealand. It's an odd town, small, quiet, and overrun by ice people. It has the feel of a college town, without the college students. There is a small, slow river (Avon River) running through the center of town on which people can "punt" - take a guided canoe ride in water that would come up to your knees if you tried to wade across. Bagpipes are apparently popular. Also, ducks. A nice botanical garden and some very interesting...
Last post before I head south of the equator for the first time. As I finish packing up and get ready for the airport shuttle to arrive, I feel like things are going pretty smoothly. We'll see about that...I can't help but compare my trip to a previous expedition to Antarctica: I recently finished reading Endurance by Alfred Lansing - a chronicle of Ernest Shackleton's incredible failure and triumph of a journey to cross the Antarctic continent on foot (and sled) in 1914. Before they landed, the Endurance (Shackleton's ship) became bound in the ice, and it all goes downhill from there. Every time you think things are as bad as they can get, well, something new happens. The stamina and willpower of these 28 men is just incredible - the entire crew survived setback after setback for...
One of the things I am most looking forward to on my trip to Antarctica is communicating with students, my own and other classrooms across the country. To encourage this, I have been soliciting ideas for experiments to try while I am down there, so I can report results back to curious students through journals and e-mails. Here are a few that have been suggested, and which I am considering. The ideas for these experiments test the difference between your "usual" conditions, compared to the conditions at the south pole: temperatures on the order of -30 degrees F, humidity on the order of the Sahara Desert, altitude on the order of California's highest peak, not to mention 24 hours of sunlight.
1) homeostasis. How will the body adjust to these extreme conditions? I will be...
Video journal, interviews of IceCube personnel. Filmed in August 09 at the Physical Sciences Lab of the University of Wisconsin, Madison. I think the video speaks for itself!
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Katey writes:
“I hear music!” It was the cry of victory for Upward Bound students in River Falls, WI. Thirty-five students, nearly all of them in possession of their own cell phone or iPod (or both!) were tuning in to AM radio signals and celebrating the success of hearing fuzzy preachers or faint gospel choirs. These students were just as enamored as their instructors as they worked for three hard days creating radios and transmitters, finally tapping morse code messages to each other and decoding secret messages from the staff.
Who were the campers who liked AM radios so much? They were students from Arlington High School in St. Paul, Minnesota. They were minority students, some first generation immigrants, some still learning English. They were creative, young...
Coming into the IceCube project as a biologist was apprehensive to say the least. I certainly felt like the outsider among the physics heavy staff and teaching regiment. Biology is my passion but I also have a deep interest in physics as a content area. My involvement with IceCube has given me the chance to explore some intense physics and deeper understand the world around me. I quickly found that although the program is based heavily in the physics department they eagerly welcome science of all types. This project is more about the SCIENCE happening than it is about the specifics of the project. As a biologist this helped calm my nerves and allowed me to explore the subject through the lens of the life sciences.
Biology is the study of life but when broken down to its...
Scott Murphy writes:The iceCube/PolarTrec team descended upon River Falls, Wisconsin on July 6th for two weeks full of science, Midwestern hospitality, and good old-fashioned fun. We were lucky enough to be hosted by Dr. Jim Madsen and the University of Wisconsin – River Falls. We stayed at Parker Hall on the campus and got our fill to eat at two university favorites, Freddy’s and the Commons. In addition to learning from Dr. Madsen, Eric Muhs and Steve Stevenowski, two outstanding science teachers, joined us at River Falls to lend their expertise in being a teacher scientist and incorporating current science into your classroom. Also, Dr. Kurt Woschnagg from the University of California - Berkeley came all the way from California to give a guest lecture. Taking the course with us...
It's been a busy month! In preparation for the upcoming IceCube trip, our team (me, Katey, Kristen, Liz, Scott and Jim) spent nearly two weeks at the University of Wisconsin, River Falls working with Jim Madsen, Steve Stevenoski, and Eric Muhs. The first week was a crash course in astrophysics and particle physics, to help us more fully understand the nature of neutrinos and their detection. The second week we worked with a group of kids from the Upward Bound program in the Twin Cities, a program that helps at-risk students keep their minds engaged over the summer to help them succeed academically.
One big development during the first week in Wisconsin was that I got my travel dates for the South Pole. I will be leaving California at the end of November, the weekend before...
One of the most fascinating things for me as a science teacher is the process of investigating the physical world - whether it is watching awesome birds and crazy bugs in Costa Rica, or the optics of camera lenses that allow me to take photos, or the complexity of carbon dioxide's interactions - good and bad - with everything on earth. IceCube is an amazing example of using deep science and technology to search for the unknown, and the processes by which people make sense of the universe.During our River Falls training, we tried out a number of classroom activities which were designed to be broad and open-ended, and which would be applicable in any type of science classroom as a way to learn about the nature and process of science. Here are a few brief examples, and soon I will post...
I am a big fan of stop-motion animation, and wanted to try out a piece of software so I could have students use it for projects. SAM Animation is free (available on the web), simple to use, and uses your computer's web cam (or a USB web cam). I plan to offer it as an option for some student projects this upcoming year.Anyway, I wanted to test it out, figure out some tricks and push the limits of the software... so I put together a stop-motion animation to help explain some of the science behind the IceCube Neutrino Observatory. I'm pretty pleased with the outcome! check it out, and feel free to share it and use it in your class...
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Warm, humid, with frequent thunderstorms and rain.
In preparation for my upcoming South Pole expedition, I figured it would behoove me to get in some cold weather training. Then I changed my mind and went to Costa Rica instead.
Each summer for the past three years, I have traveled with a group of 20+ students and several teacher chaperones to explore the ecology of the Central American nation of Costa Rica. Costa Rica contains some of the richest biodiversity on the planet, including 212 species of mammals, 850 species of birds, and countless hordes of reptiles, amphibians, insects, spiders, and other creepy crawlies.
In coordination with EcoTeach and our incredibly knowledgeable, friendly, and engaging guides, the centerpiece of our trip was working with (critically threatened) leatherback sea turtles both with egg laying...
Since my expedition is still a few months off, I haven't made a whole lot of progress in preparing for my trip... though I did find a nice "mascot" for my classroom. Any suggestions for a name?
At the end of March, I gave a 20-minute presentation to the regional AAPT spring meeting, I felt a little intimidated since some of the other presenters were "heavy hitters" in the northern California physics teaching community. But it was a smallish group, and I knew what I was talking about (for the most part) so it went smoothly.
On the "Ask the Team" page, Jack asked a great question about human impact in Antarctica. So, I did a little research and came up with some interesting information.
First of all, Antarctica is governed by the Antarctica Treaty System,...
Fairbanks holds many wonders for the casual visitor, not least of which is the annual World Ice Art Championships. Artists sculpt elaborate and clever designs in blocks of solid ice cut from a nearby rock quarry lake. The amount of time and skill that goes into carving these works of art is phenomenal! Artist teams have 2.5 days to carve a 5' x 8' x 3' block of ice, and many work around the clock using chisels and chainsaws. Here are some photos.
Some artists make more "interactive" exhibits like an ice maze and these ice slides. It's hard to convey the entertainment value of sliding down a hill of ice on your butt, but one word sums it up: woohoo!
For the nerdier visitors to Fairbanks, check out the CRREL Permafrost Tunnel. This tunnel into the side of the hill shows...
This morning, Jim Madsen, physics professor and IceCube researcher from the University of Wisconsin-River Falls, arrived to the PolarTREC training. I and the other KSTF Fellows spoke with Jim at length about the project, including expectations and our roles as PolarTREC teachers. Jim enlightened us about the nature of neutrinos and how the IceCube detector works to detect them. We had a lot of questions for Jim about neutrinos and how we can study them!
What is a neutrino?
neutrinos are subatomic particles, related to electrons but with no electric charge. They pass through regular matter unchanged (except in rare cases). If it doesn't interact, there is no way to detect it, making it effectively invisible (consider: for our eyes to detect light, the light must interact with...
Today was a day of exploration. Rather than sitting in a stuffy conference room, warm and well-stocked with caffeinated beverages, we ventured out into the icy arctic air. Our goal? to witness the final stage of the Yukon Quest sled-dog race, akin to the more famous Iditarod in scale - covering the more than 1000 miles between Whitehorse, Yukon, Canada and Fairbanks, Alaska, USA in two short weeks. (quick - physics and math students - what is the average speed of the dog teams? for extra challenge, assume 8 hours a day of rest time)
At about 11 am, the first team rode in victorious to an applauding crowd. A few short minutes later, the second-place finishing team rode in, a very close race as these things go.
Lunch at the ARCUS office was tasty and varied - pasta, salmon dip,...
First post!!!1!
Welcome to my journal for Mr. O'Hara's Amazing Antarctic Adventure [tm]! Of course, I am on the opposite side of the planet right now, in Fairbanks, Alaska, thanks to my hosts at PolarTREC. Why would I be going to the South Pole? To hunt and capture the elusive Neutrino, a mythical beast that is invisible, tiny, and able to move through "regular" matter as if it were nothing at all.
Joining me here in Fairbanks are three of my Knowles Science Teaching Fellows (kstf w00t!): Katey Shirey (2006 Physical Science), Kristen Fancher (2006 Physical Science) and Liz Ratliff (2008 Math), as well as another 15 teachers off to other research projects in other polar areas. There are also some PolarTREC alumni and researchers to share stories of their experiences. More on...