This activity was prepared by David Walker (LASA High School) and Rose Cory (University of Michigan), based on work conducted during summer 2019 at Toolik Field Station in Alaska. The purpose is to expose students to photooxidation, one of the main pathways by which organic molecules in Arctic streams are oxidized into carbon dioxide. Different teas will be used
For this activity, the students are going to draw on their own knowledge and experience with weather to predict the current temperatures around the world and then compare their predictions with real-time weather data from selected locations around the world. The students will then be provided with several factors that affect both daily changes in temperature and climatological temperature
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.
The Solar Oven Science activity was developed as a way to target conservation of energy. Some students understand that he sun can be used for heating and cooking but they mistakenly think that this can only work in deserts. Because of conservation of energy solar cooking and heating can work in temperate and even arctic environments. The linked
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