Last weekend I lead our annual Fall Field Camp with my fellow teacher, Mr. Calderwood. We had 16 ninth grade Earth Science students who formed teams of 2-4 people and each team spent all day on Saturday collecting data at Camp Talooli. Some of the teams measured the chemistry of the lakes at the camp. One group collected and photographed the invertebrates living on the lake bottom. Another group measured and compared the growth rates of trees near the lake.
Students Eric & John chose to solve a problem for my trip to Antarctica. The science teams on the Oden that are going to study the sea ice and the seals, both asked me if I could use my underwater video camera under the sea ice. The sea ice team will use an ice core to cut 14cm diameter holes up to 2 meters through the sea ice and they would like to be able to look at the underside of the ice. The problem is that my underwater camera must be turned 90 degrees and pushed straight down in order to fit through the hole. Eric and John spent all day creating and testing a way to attach the camera to a 3 meter piece of plastic pipe so that they could control the angle of the camera below the sea ice from above the sea ice. I am totally impressed with their creativity and the prototype actually works! Next week they will take prototype #1 apart and make improvements. They also must figure out how to get the 3 meter pole into the 35 cm wide camera case!
Check out the 2.5 minute movie we made of the camera project.
http://
Have fun & make memories!
Jeff Peneston