As I sat in my Fairbanks hotel room this evening I was considering writing about the aurora borealis (the Northern Lights). I have, for the moment, decided against this, however. I have two reasons for this:
A bunch of us are going tonight to try to see them so chances are good I will be able to get some pictures or video to share later.
A bunch of us are going tonight to try to see them so chances are good another PolarTREC teacher has already beaten me to it.
So instead I thought I would share a few random thoughts about Fairbanks.
The first thing you should know about Fairbanks is that you can get some really decent Thai food here... go figure.
The second thing you should know is that given that this is winter in Alaska it is, in fact, pretty cold here. Shocking, I know, but it is the truth. Actually, according to the locals it has been a pretty mild winter this year but I am from Michigan so I recognize cold when I feel it. I left the Detroit area thinking to myself that I would be fine as that I am from hearty Michigan stock. I was right I am fine. I am fine and cold.
But what has stuck me about the weather is not so much the cold as how dry it is. You have probably noticed that dry air often results in the occasional static electrical shock. Last night I was reminded of this in an unintentional experiment in triboelectricity. "What is triboelectricity?", you may ask. It is simply the transfer of electrons when two different materials (usually insulators) are rubbed together ... like when the cotton sheets here in the hotel rub against the silk of my pj's when I roll over. You see one or the other of these materials will tend to grab electrons off one another.
To be honest I am not sure whether electrons would move from silk to cotton or the other way around (I didn't have a triboelectric series handy) but you get the idea...
When it is humid the water in the air can help dissipate the charge but when the air is dry charges can build up. This can result in a considerable electrical potential (voltage) being built up. In fact, it build up thousands of volts! Luckily, electrical potential is a measure of how much energy each charge has but since the total amount of charge is small nobody gets hurt much. Think of this like someone dropping a quarter on your head from the second floor of a building. That little quarter has a lot of potential energy because its up really high but since a quarter doesn't have all that much mass then the result is you are left confused and irritated but uninjured. In the same way, we can give the electrons in the bed sheets lots of energy by moving them together. But since the total charge on those electrons is small when they jump around the result is mostly irritating and not enough to injure.
Not to scale
"What does all this have to do with the poles?"; you are, at this point, undoubtably (and quite reasonably) asking. Well I guess that it's the little things that interest me. You see Fairbanks has been quite dry the last month or so but Antarctica is pretty much dry all the time (I bet you didn't think I'd get around to talking about Antarctica!) Antarctica gets less than 10 inches of precipitation a year, on average. In short, Antarctica is a desert. PolarTREC alums have been helping me to prepare for this. They have cautioned me to stay hydrated when I'm there. It' easy, they tell me, to underestimate how much water you are loosing to sweat and respiration. They have suggested bringing lip balm and hand lotion because those little things can make a lot of difference in an extreme environment even if its just in terms of keeping your spirits up. The little things make a difference. When I arrive in Antarctica I shall have to remember to be careful when I climb into my bunk. Maybe I'll bring a few anti-static dryer sheets....
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