Submitted by Anonymous on Mon, 12/15/2008 - 05:26

Hi Jeff and the team!

This falls under life's little ironies.  Our school was closed today because of too much ice on our parking lot!  I think we need the Oden!  We were going to watch the webinar, but we will have to settle for watching the archived edition.

As a middle school science teacher, I try to emphasize the scientific method as much as possible.  My webinar question would have been:

What kind of controls do the scientists use with their tests?  I imagine some of the data is observations, but I'm sure they have to calibrate their instruments.  I apologize if this topic has already been covered.

We are enjoying your journal (especially the photos) and are looking forward to seeing our flag flying.  Good luck with the webinar!

Sue Doering

St. Francis of Assisi School, St. Louis, MO

Jeff Peneston

Sue,And to think how much we all hope for a “snow day” once in a while!I am hoping to offer a 2nd webinar around Jan 8th.  Keep in touch.
Most of the science on board is not observational.  Most of it is happening in portable field labs bolted to the ship’s decks.  The ice teams bring their ice and water samples inside, the physical oceanographers do the same and the CTD that goes down to the depths of the sea is sending a range of measurements back to a computer on board.  Most of the scientists on board are chemists or microbiologists and they are very careful to follow lab procedures that start with calibrating their equipment.  The Somma machine that I described in my 12/11 journal post is an example.   After being shipped to Sweden, loaded onto Oden, spending a month at sea crossing the Atlantic and then 4 wild days crossing the Drake Passage, Brett and Dr. Yager were very concerned that the sensitive machine would not work properly.  They spent 2 days running tests just to get it to calibrate and correctly measure known samples.  If they did not know the tool was properly measuring the samples the whole project would have been in peril.  Each lab has gone through the same controls and they repeat them before each round of testing.  Bad data is worse than no data.
The seal research team really wants to study the genetics of the seal population and so part of their procedure is to take more than one genetic sample from each seal.  They take hair, blood and fat samples.   Making memories in the ice,
Jeff Peneston