PolarConnect event held with PolarTREC Teacher Tina Sander and the research team studying the Ross Sea benthic organisms, based at McMurdo Station, Antarctica.
This PolarConnect event was with PolarTREC Teacher Tina Sander and researcher Stacy Kim who are conducting research on the Antarctic seafloor using divers and an underwater robot. This is the first of three PolarConnect events this team will conduct.
Students will undertake a long term project to evaluate the effectiveness of different local forecasters, match the forecast with the actual weather and analyze which forecaster is best.
Objective
Students will compare the accuracy of different weather forecasts. Students will compile and analyze their own data gaining a better understanding of the challenges involved in weather forecasting
This activity is designed to make a connection between a group of scientists and the students.
Objective
Students will learn that scientists are people too.
Preparation
The teacher will need to contact a group of scientists to make sure they would like to participate in the project and to explain to them the goals of the
The journal assignment involves students in current science research. Through the teacher’s journals, they will learn about how the research teams work together, design their research, tools that are needed and how they live and work in an extreme environment.
Objective
Students will be able to:
1. Understand how scientific research is conducted in an extreme environment
Working in groups, students will use common materials to create layers of snow and ice representing thousands of years of stratification. Groups will exchange their ice layers and extract core samples to analyze them.
Objective
Notice the phenomenon of stratification.
Notice that layers can tell a story of change over time.
Students use data and pictures of a destroyed wind sensor, to develop a theory of what happened to the station. They then develop a plan to make sure the station is not destroyed again.
Objective
Students will be able to use data to develop a reasonable hypothesis.