Submitted by Anonymous on Thu, 03/26/2009 - 09:59
Forums
Geologic Climate Research in Siberia

Hi Team!

Mrs. Goodman's 4th grade class at Greensboro Day School has just read through all of Mr. Martin's exciting journal entries. What an adventure! The class wants to know:

What was it like to walk on the Arctic Ocean? Were you scared? We thought that because oceans were salt water and moving that they couldn't freeze. How does that happen?

What went wrong with the drilling? Is there a chance that the expedition will get canceled?

Have you seen any animals in Siberia?

Thanks for letting us participate!

Fri, 03/27/2009 - 04:38

Tim Martin

Ms. Goodman and class, 
So good to hear from you and GDS! I hope everyone is enjoying spring in NC for me!
 
You have a bunch of great questions!
 
As far as what went wrong with the drilling down at the lake, some parts of the drilling equipment broke so we are arranging for replacement parts. It is important that our part of the team helps coordinate getting the parts so that when we get to the lake we can resume drilling. Some parts are already waiting to be picked up in Bilibino, Russia, but we are still waiting on others. As soon as the parts arrive we will fly down to the lake. In stead of flying directly to the lake, we will take the Helicopter to Bilibino then fly over to the lake. (Students: See if you can find Pevek, Bilibino and Lake El'gygytgyn on a map.) At this point there are no plans to cancel the expedition, althouh we may not drill as many holes as originally planned.
 
I have not seen any animals other than dogs... there are lots of stray dogs that run around Pevek. Many of them look like they may be related to Wolves. They have big fluffy fur coats to stay warm in the below zero weather. Earlier in the day we were talking to our translator who was telling us about a time when a polar bear came into Pevek...so we are all keeping our eyes open!
 
Your other question was about walking on the ocean... That was really neat! I was not too scared after I saw a car then a big truck driving on the ice road across the sea ice. The other thing that helped me feel safe was walking with Volker Neth. Volker is our ice engineer...he knows all about ice... I will introduce him to you in a journal soon. Volker said that the ice was most likely more than 1 meter thick and I know I can walk on ice that is 10cm thick. You are correct about a difference between fresh and salt water. The reason why the ocean can freeze is that it gets so cold! The temperature right now is -10F a few weeks ago the temperature was 40 below zero! When it gets that cold even the ocean will freeze.