This lesson will provide students with an opportunity to design and carry out an experiment that mimics the conditions causing accelerated ice melt along the face of the Thwaites Glacier off the southwest coast of Antarctica. Created by Sarah Slack during her expedition to Thwaites aboard the icebreaker Nathaniel B. Palmer, this activity aligns with the Science and Engineering
This lesson about the factors affecting water density in the Amundsen Sea was developed by educator Sarah Slack during her PolarTREC expedition aboard the Nathaniel B. Palmer icebreaker. Part of the science mission was to create a detailed map of the seafloor at the face of the Thwaites Glacier, which revealed a series of channels that were conducting a
PolarTREC (Teachers and Researchers Exploring and Collaborating) is a program funded by the National Science Foundation that partners K-12 teachers in the United States with scientists doing research in polar regions. The goal of the program is for teachers to be authentically integrated into scientific expeditions in order to gain new skills and experiences that they
This is an archive of a PolarConnect event with PolarTREC teacher Sarah Slack and researcher Dr. Frank Nitsche aboard the R/V Nathaniel B. Palmer discussing the science and fieldwork around the Thwaites Glacier in West Antarctica. This event took place in the Amundsen Sea on 9 March 2020.
A guest blog post from PolarTREC teacher Sarah Slack discussing her observations from her expedition aboard the R/V Nathaniel B. Palmer. This article was published by the National Wildlife Federation Blog.
Even in Antarctica ice will melt. As the sun stays higher and higher in the sky as summer progresses, the warm sun causes the ice to melt. The questions that we are going to ask are: 1) Does clean ice (no sediment) or dirty ice (has sediment mixed in it) melt faster? and 2) Would the ice melt if
We know that we have lots of microorganisms growing where we live, but can microorganisms like bacteria also live in the harsh, cold, dry climate of Antarctica? Part of our research project in Antarctica is looking at the microorganisms that live in the Taylor Glacier. We are taking dirty ice (ice with lots of dirt/sediment in it) and
For this experiment, we are going to melt dirty ice (ice with lots of sediment/dirt in it) and clean ice (ice without sediment) from the Taylor Glacier. After we melt the ice, we are going to test the melt water for pH and conductivity, and then determine how much salt is actually in our ice samples. There are
As part of a migratory bird study conducted with my bilingual second graders in Washington, DC, the students in my elementary science class spent four weeks getting to know all about birds! We initially focused on birds that migrate from our Mid-Atlantic forests to the tropical forests of Central America (an area where many of them are from)
This lesson came out of a desire to connect the plankton research that I did during the 0902 Healy cruise with my young "researchers" back in Washington, DC. I wanted them to understand that plankton not only feed the Arctic but that much of the world relies on these little critters that come to life for us when we look