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.
This is a newspaper article from the Pittsburgh Post Gazette that ran on 10/5/18. It is about PolarTREC teacher Michael Penn's expedition to Antarctica in November and December of 2018.
This is a radio interview with WESA (Pittsburgh Public Radio) on "The Confluence" with PolarTREC teacher Mike Penn and Kevin Gavin. Penn's interview starts at approximately 18:05.
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.
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
The website, Ice Stories, features short interviews and other interesting content live from the polar regions. This weblink has a short video interview of PolarTREC teacher, Craig Beals, while taking part in a PolarTREC expedition with Barry Lefer at Summit, Greenland.