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SIMBA Antarctic Sea Ice

 

Hi Sarah,

One of my students, Mikey, wants to know how you get off the ship onto the ice, without breaking your legs?

Emmalee asks, In the picture of you working on the ice it looks so foggy. How do you keep from getting lost?

 

You asked for football scores, my 8th graders beat Fredericksburg yesterday 16 to 6. Cool

 

Stay wam

Kirk

Mon, 10/08/2007 - 11:15

Sarah Anderson

Great to hear from folks back home, I've been watching what weather we get here; looks like it's been pretty warm at home...I'm getting used to the cold weather, but I'll be happy to come home to a Texas winter.Mikey - it's easy to get off the ship because they put a gangway out from the ship to the ice. I'll take a picture and post it so you can see what I mean. A crane lifts the gangway out and positions it; then the crane holds the gangway in place. Sometimes the boat moves a bit in the water and the gangway has to be repositioned. They won't let us do anything that's not safe, which makes sense given the extreme conditions here. We always have to wear flotation (a jacket with built in "floatable" foam, or a small life vest) and you can't wander around outside alone...common sense things that make everything safe.
Emmalee - how do we keep from getting lost...the visibility is not usually as bad as the pictures make it look. The only time I haven't been able to see anything was today...we were out about half a mile from the ship when a mini-blizzard blew through. In the course of ten minutes we went from unlimited visibility to where we could see almost nothing. But, in a few minutes the visibility was good again and we continued working. The same thing happend about an hour later...they say the weather changes a lot in Texas!
Football scores...nothing like football season in Texas. Glad your team won, we always like to beat Fredericksburg too!!
Great to hear from y'all...send more questions!
Mrs. Anderson

Wed, 10/10/2007 - 11:33

Barney Peterson

We read the information about the weather stations and the solar collector panels that provide the power to them.  Students want to know if the stations work during the Antarctic winter when there is no sunlight to provide power.  We know regular batteries don't work well in the extreme cold so we can't firgure out what power is available.