Submitted by Anonymous on Mon, 12/22/2008 - 09:29

Well, you have kept us all in suspense waiting to see what happens to the foam blocks. I have two guesses.

1.) They will come back up to be the size of  about ice cubes

or

2.)Because it is beaded foam and not really well bonded, they will break in to many pieces as the air trapped deep inside the blocks rips them apart as it tries to escape from the extreme pressures of the deep. 

Scooter Youst

Fellow co-worker of Jeff 

Jeff Peneston

Scooter,
First, I included photos of the foam blocks after they had gone down and I will check with PolarTREC to see if they are missing.
At any rate, I have seen this demonstration done before with foam coffee cups so I was confident that the polystyrene beads would not come apart.  Even so, I took the time to use a heat-gun on each side of each block to seal them.  I did not want to be responsible for contaminating the cleanest ocean in the world with plastic!!
The blocks came out as miniatures. They started as 300 cubic centimeters and 10 cm long, and then ended up as only about 42 cubic centimeters and 5.5 cm long.
More than anyone else, I hope that YOU can appreciate my efforts to capture this experience and condense it into 3-minute videos.  My next assignment is a series of interviews with the scientists.  Can I translate their research passions, goals and methods into digestible video chunks?  We’ll see.
I hope everyone in your family has a great holiday.  Remember to keep reading my journals over the break.  There are new videos coming!
Take care,
Jeff