Never, in my 27 year career as a teacher, have I had so many students so interested and enthusiastic in so many broad and varied topics that they would have immediately dismissed as “boring” had I not participated in PolarTREC. I was happily mystified by the curiosity of the students and the depth of their interest in
This is an article in a local quarterly magazine (IN Shaler Winter 2018 ed.) about Mike Penn's PolarTREC deployment to Antarctica with the 2018 Automatic Weather Stations project.
In this 20 minute podcast interview, PolarTREC teacher Mike Penn sits down with Brian Crawford and discusses his upcoming trip to Antarctica. This interview took place on 9/23/18.
Researchers at the University of Alaska Fairbanks are studying the East Siberian Arctic Shelf region and finding the seafloor there holds vast stores of frozen methane and is showing signs of instability and widespread venting of the powerful greenhouse gas. In this video University of Alaska Fairbanks scientist Natalia Shakhova discusses the East Siberian Arctic Shelf area.
In an explosive clip from the BBC's landmark series, scientists drill into a frozen lake to ignite methane gas that is trapped in bubbles beneath the surface. Do greenhouse gases pose a signficant threat to our planet? Dr Iain Stewart assesses the dangers.
University of Alaska Fairbanks Professor Katey Walter Anthony takes us onto a frozen lake in Fairbanks, AK to demonstrate why methane gas has "exploded" onto the climate change scene.
This activity is a way to create a cloud chamber in the classroom. A cloud chamber allows students to view "invisible" alpha particles emitted through nuclear decay. Alpha particles have a long history in nuclear physics--they are a helium nucleus and their emission during nuclear decay was one of the first ways we knew that atomic nuclei could
As the homepage of the website describes, "The beauty of the Arctic, its precious and fragile nature, its critical role in maintaining a stable climate for the planet, and the rapid rate of change that is occurring there must all be conveyed to the general public. Here, through digital story telling, we put a human face on science, life, societies