10 July 2014 First Day of Arctic Science Education Week (The Day before Summit) ..... by Siku Group

We began the day with breakfast at the airport, though thanks to a small technical error ended up in the wrong place of the airport where the choice of food was a bit below average. Afterwards we regrouped upstairs in the JSEP building's top floor / presentation room to hear about lakes and more specifically about methane coming from said lake.

Sadly we had to say goodbye to Kasper and Rikke since the program has changed from KSFS (Administrated by Greenland) to Arctic Science Education Week (Administrated by USA and therefore Lynn). That being it said it`s actually our dear leader Lynn´s last year since she will be returning to focusing on teaching.

The presentation was done by Dr. Jeff White from Indiana University (his grant is from NASA). He is part of a team designing a component for the next Mars rover, the point of which is to study methane levels on Mars. Why is that important you might find yourself asking. Since there are 2 different kind of carbon in methane C12 and C13 it's possible to tell if the methane is there through biological processes or geological processes. This is possible due to the fact that in biological processes there are enzymes which produce C12 faster than C13 methane. So there will be an greater unbalance between the C12 and C13 methane than in geological processes. Ultimately this can therefore be used to determine whether or not life ever existed on Mars.

Since we here like to help out with whatever we can, Lynn promptly got us out to a beautiful lake to collect methane samples by running around in waders and collecting whatever methane popped out of the mud in the shallows of the lake.

If there is one lesson to take away form today it’s to never walk out in a lake in waders because, holy bajebus, one gets stuck fast. Imagine a lake bottom that makes you sink 30-50cm and stick to your boot. It all turned out in good fun though and no one got completely stuck, though some of us had close calls.

Poem about Methane:

Microbes make methane down under Enough to affect the warming of earth drastically The methane bubbles are being released Happening with each step taken in the lake And did you know that Hasib fell into the lake? Not everyone fell but Everyone had a fun time being together outside

From the lake we drove to Kellyville. Kellyville is the place where the Sondrestrom Incoherent Scatter RadarA method of estimating the distance or travel speed of an object by bouncing high frequency signals off the object and measuring the reflected signal. Facility is. When we arrived at Kellyville we had a small presentation from one of the four guys staying there, named Eggert. He talked about Earth's magnetic poles and how they affect the aurora borealis also known as the northern lights. It was very exciting to hear about the northern lights, especially for the Danes and the Americans, since it’s primarily only visible in the most northern and southern parts of Earth.

After the presentation we got shown around in the area. After a couple of hours in Kellyville we went back to the airport for dinner. Most of us got the meal of the day, and Erica was so excited to get it, because she loves the meat, potatoes and gravy. After dinner the last member that was joining us to the Summit arrived in town. It was a Greenlandic teacher named Dorthe-Katrine. She will be the first Greenlandic teacher to go to the Summit. That’s pretty amazing!

Word of the day: Hydrate.