Summary
Today students visited the Sondestrom Incoherent Scatter Radar facility, aka Kellyville. This facility uses RADAR to profile the upper atmosphere and LIDAR (Laser radar) to profile the lower atmosphere. They also study the aurora borealis with the radio attenna. You can learn more about the radar facility at http://isr.sri.com/
Group Picture at Kellyville
Aggu Broberg (Grl) at the Incoherent Scatter Radar facility in Kellyville
Group 4's Video of Kellyville
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In the afternoon students Skyped with Tim Spuck and Jean Pennycook, Einstein Fellows working at the National Science Foundation. Tim talked about the IceBridge project, an aircraft that flies over Greenland and Antarctica to profile the ice sheets. Jean Pennycook talked about her research with penguins in Antarctica. You can visit Jean's website at http://www.penguinscience.com/.
George Hale of NASA also discussed IceBridge via skype. You can learn more about IceBridge at http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/icebridge/index.html
In the late afternoon students did a radio astronomy activity with Shelly Hynes and Lynn Reed. Students were given radiographs, charts of data that were taken with a radio telescope in Greenbank, WV. These radiographs showed the hyperfine transition of hydrogen. From these graphs students determined many characteristics of the galaxy like the spiral shape, its mostly made of hydrogen, our solar system is 2/3 of the way out from the center, and the direction it spins. Group 3 then collected each group's data and gave an oral report discussing all of the results.
In the evening Maeve McCormick (Boise, Idaho) led a group activity to build trebuchets. Students with the best trebuchets then entered competition to see whose would launch candy the farthest. This year's winner was Dana Cucci of East Hamption, NY.
From left: Cecilia (Grl), Malou (Grl), Malene (Grl), Dana (US), Bikki (Grl), Kunuk (Grl)
Today's Weather by Group 1
Today at Kellyville, we measured the weather at 67°0’34’’ N, 50°42’40’’ W. The sky was pretty clear with a few scattered clouds, possibly cumulus. Even though it seemed perfectly idyllic, it was quite windy.
Facts:
- Wind speed: 4,7 m/s
- Temperature: 18°C
- Relative humidity: 51%
- Barometric pressure: 994,21 mili bar
- Wind gust speed: 4,2 m/s
- Dew point: 6,7°C
- Wind chill: 18,7°C
Student Blogs
Charlotte Kjær Madsen (Denmark)
Charlotte Kjær Madsen (Denmark)
My name is Charlotte and I live in the western part of the southern Denmark. I have just finished my second year at Ribe Katedralskole. It is a Danish version of the American high school. Today we have had a physics day, awesome – cause who doesn´t love physics? We started out by getting a short introduction to radio waves. Afterwards we went out seeing Kelly Ville, a radar station. We got a guided tour in the main building and a lecture about the radar station and how they do their measurements. Somehow I managed to be really tried under the lecture even though we got to sleep an hour longer this morning then the other mornings. Sadly enough I wasn´t the only tried one. When we got back to the school Shelly told us some more theory about the radio waves and answered any question we should have from the radar station. It was really nice to get it all summed up and take the theory slowly step by step. Afterwards we had two video conferences the first one with Tim Spuck and Jane, the other one with George Hale from NASA. Both conferences were about the ICEbridge. ICEbridge is a project NASA runs from 2009 to 2016 where they measure the thickness of the ice sheets on Antarctic and Greenland and the Arctic ice with different equipment on an airplane until they can send a satellite into space to measure. But the satellite must first be built. Again were the lectures taken slowly with stops for translations into Danish, it was really nice for us without perfect English. Before dinner we all gathered in the kitchen to learn a method which have been used to get information about your galaxy the Milky Way, at first it was really hard to see the idea behind the method but as we got through it, it actually become quite interesting in the end. But that is how it is with science, it is often confusing in the beginning, but at the end, it becomes clearer. But that is what makes science fun.
Aviaq Fly
Aviaq Fly (Uummannaq, Greenland)
Hi, I am to make the blog for you guys today! My name is Aviaq Fly, and I am 18 years of age. I was born up north Greenland, on a little island with the name Uummannaq. It is named after the mountain of Uummannaq. It is a small town of about 1300 inhabitants. I have been living in the capital of Greenland, Nuuk, for three years with my family. Afterwards, we moved to Ilulissat, third largest city (town) in Greenland, and lived there for a year. Then we moved back to Uummannaq. I stayed there till I got finished with primary school. I went to Denmark for a year of boarding school, and then stayed in the U.S. for a year thru AFS exchange program. – Now, we’ve already moved back to Ilulissat! But I don’t really feel like that I live there, since I’m in Aasiaat (another town), going on high school. I have interests in science. I like chemistry and physics and love spending some time in the nature with awesome people to get along with. Based on my interests, I thought that biologists might be something for me, but I’m a little insecure about it now since I’ve tried lots of stuff that I like, and where I found some skills that I have in other subjects, like visual arts, maths and English. For todays activities we: Slept an hour extra - yuhhuuuuw! We went to Kellyville, to hear about the telescopes, lasers, radars, and northern lights! – So we had lots of physics today. After hearing about them, we looked around the place and got told how things work there. After spending a couple of hours at Kellyville, we went back to our school here in Kangerlussuaq, and skyped with Tim Spuck, whom was informing us about the IceBridge project going on here in Greenland. And a couple of minutes after his presentation, we skyped with someone else explaining us what Polar TREC is. Afterwards, we went to another room in the school and got taught by Shelly, one of our teachers whom is INTO physics, of how we can tell how the Milky Way looks like and how it is moving using radiographs. I found it quite difficult since I’m not used to reading those special graphs. It was very interesting tho. When we were done studying the Milky Way, we got time off till 7:30 pm. 7:30 pm, we were having some fun activities together. We build up a small catapult made out of paper and competed with the other groups, trying to see whose catapult can throw m&m’s chocolate furthest away. And it was group #3 who’ve won that game. Then we get to play another game. It was where we went with our groups, writing down the correct names for the flowers shown on the slides. – We haven’t figured out which of the groups have won that game yet. We won’t know before tomorrow. After the fun activities, we were dismissed for the rest of the day, so we did whatever we needed or wanted to do for the rest for the day.