I’m in Alaska! That leaves Delaware as the only state I have not been to. Ironically Delaware was the first state to join the Union on December 7, 1787. In another twist, one of the PolarTREC teachers I met here lives in Delaware and after reading my first journal entry, invited me to visit so I could cross his state off my list.
What am I doing in Alaska? Training – lots of training. PolarTREC, the organization that pairs teachers with polar researchers, hosts all the teachers that are deploying to Polar Regions in 2013-14 in Fairbanks, AK for a week of training. We are learning about the technology needed to communicate from remote areas, living in remote areas, and how we can get the most out of this experience and share that experience with our students and others.
Since I deploy to Greenland just 48 hours after returning to Wisconsin from this week of training, I brought everything I thought I would need in Greenland to Alaska. It’s a lot of stuff! And since I’m going to a place that has Internet access and electricity I brought a lot of electronics: laptop, Nikon DSLR camera, small Olympus digital camera, flip video camera, iPad, cell phone, Livescribe Smartpen, GPS watch, and a USB hub. Most of those things have additional cables and chargers.
The flight to Alaska was uneventful, took some pictures of the mountains as we flew over, and met the other teachers from Chicago – there are four of us. The pictures (and video) are below and I’ll try to introduce you to the other teachers in another journal. Some of them are going to truly remote places.
The Canadian Rockies from somewhere in northern British Columbia. Looking north from 38,000 feet.
Flying over the Alaska Range we had a rare, clear view of Mt. Denali
http://
.
Math/Science Question I: The earth has a circumference of about 24,000 miles. If you were to fly halfway around the earth, how far would you be from home? (Yes, this is a bit of a trick question – the answer is not 12,000 miles.)
Math/Science Question II: In the video, I measured the maximum sound level in the plane to be 89 dB. Compute the sound intensity using the formula L = 10 log (I/I_o), where L is the sound level and I_o is the threshold of hearing or 1E-12 watts per square meter.
.
.
Answers: about 8,000 miles – the diameter of the earth, 7.9E-4 watts per square meter.