Ice is a medium that nearly everyone is familiar with. We put it in drinks, skate on it for hockey and scrape it off our windshields in winter. Ice can be turned into sculptures and can even make for some fantastic winter scenery. Ice can also turn into a kaleidoscope of color and patterns under the right circumstances. Science
This lesson is intended to help students make connections to polar science while discovering how and why sea ice drives deep ocean currents. Students will also learn key terminology related to sea ice and using actual salinity content charts, will graph a typical sea ice core’s salinity as it relates to depth.
PolarTREC teacher Jacquelyn Hams' expedition is featured in Foundations: the Newsletter of the Geo2YC division of the National Association of Geoscience Teachers.
Beacon Valley is recognized by scientists as one of the most Mars-like environments on Earth. This lesson plan was created so that students could have the opportunity to examine the same landforms that scientists use to study the processes that operate in both of these extreme environments. There are two parts to this lesson. Teachers may choose to
The Dry Valleys region in Antarctica is known as the coldest, windiest, driest place on Earth. Beacon Valley is famous for its katabatic winds which can routinely knock fit adults and PolarTREC teachers to the ground. This lesson was created by PolarTREC teacher Jacquelyn Hams who experienced the cold and the full force of the winds in 2008
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
The Antarctic Research Group at Boston University is lead by Dr. David Marchant. Graduate students include Adam Lewis, Doug Kowalewski, and Kate Swanger.
Marchant's ongoing NSF funded research projects focus on:
1. Age, origin, and climatic significance of buried ice in the Dry Valleys region, southern Victoria Land
2. Response of the East Antarctic Ice Sheet to middle Miocene global