Module V: Oceans all around abound!

Oceans all around abound!

Explain

As I was going through this weeks’ material, I kept coming back to one thought: The earth is such a complex, interconnected system – how can we even begin to comprehend it?   There are so many things that influence our dynamic planet.  Since oceans cover most of the planet, they are a formidable force determining our climate, weather, flora, fauna, and our very survival. 

Sixty years ago, latest Rachel Carson wrote about the research, “In only the uppermost half mile of Pacific equatorial waters, therefore, there are three great rivers of water, one above the other, each flowing on its own course independent of the other.”  From The Sea Around Us.From The Sea Around Us.  

Rachel Carson

If Rachel were alive today, imagine how intrigued she would be by the length and breadth of the rivers of water at great depths – those conveyer belts that distribute heat around the globe. Gradients in temperature and salinity which may seem trivial make these great rivers flow in oceans. 

The influence of global warming on ocean rivers is hard to imagine.  One thing is clear: as the temperature changes, so will the oceans and their influence on every part of our planet.

Imagine what Rachel Carson would have thought about the wonders we have discovered by looking down on our planet by satellite! We can monitor the oceans down to minute changes in temperature, sea level, and life such as phytoplankton concentration.  All this information can tell us what is happening miles beneath the surface.   Rachel would be awed; I want my students to feel some of that awe when they see those images.  I want them to be inspired and motivated to realize what wonders we can still discover using technology that allows an unprecedented view of our pale blue dot.

What have I learned?  That the oceans are a wonder that I cannot begin to comprehend!

Extend

As I work on developing curriculum for our GPS workshop and climate change at the Challenger Learning Center, all of this material is very relavent.  I want to incorporate some of the interactive websites in our activities.

The interactive website about the life and work of  Dolly Garza is a great way to show the integration of traditional cultural values and modern science in the study of the ocean.  It is important to present career choices to student. This interactive goes further by illustrating the successful career choices a Native Alaskan women made.

 Living from the Land and Sea  really shows the dependence of subsistence on seasonal changes and other natural phenomenon such as moon phases.  Today most urban people notice those things, but they are not an integral part of their daily live and certainly not part of their survival. 

I love the demonstration with the  water balloon demonstrating heat capacity.  I learned the term and all equations for heat capacity as an engineering student in college. I would have gotten the concept a lot better (and sooner) had my professor used the water balloon! BTW, great example of how young students can comprehend difficult concepts if they are presented in the right way.

Understanding seasons is a complicated concept, even for adults.  The video explaining seasons provides an understandable explanation. For those kinesthetic learners, I like to do a demonstration where one student is the earth (they hold an inflatable globe), one is the moon, and one is the sun (they hold a flash or other light source).  You can demonstrate how different parts of the earth get varying amounts of solar radiation during a year.

 Another good demonstration or lab to show how the amount of sunlight affects temperature starts by putting dirt in two pans.  Put a light source shining directly on one pan and at an angle on the other.  Have students predict whether or not the temperature of both pans will be the same over time.  It is amazing how much difference even a small angle of incidence can make!  Have the students follow up by placing a piece of graph paper under each light.  You can see the difference in the area covered by the light.  This is a great inquiry activity! 

The diving sperm whale activity is a unique the dramatic change in temperatures in the ocean. It can be a cross-curricular activity for math and graphing skills while explaining oceanic thermoclines.

The whale activity would be neat to use following the grape juice or Kool-Aid ice cube activity.  Make ice cubes out of grape juice or red Kool-Aid.  Place them in a clear container (an aquarium if available) and watch what happens.  You can really see the currents, and then extrapolate this idea to oceans. Another demonstration is to put two pieces of tubing between 2L soda bottles.  Put red colored hot water in one side and blue colored cold water in the other.  Watch the currents flow through the tubes! Here’s a video with catchy music to use as an alternative: Water Density Demonstration.

Evaluate

There are always those students who “don’t like science.”  It is a challenge to find things to pique their interest in science.  I found some of this weeks’ activities to be a great way to meet that challenge.

A nice hook for climatology is Print your Climatoscope . A totally unexpected way to lure them in! The ideas of ocean currents and climatic variations can be introduced along side this activity.

For the artists, the false color mapping is a cool way to interest them.  You can talk about how and why the colors are used, which can lead to all kinds of discussions about data presentation. Students can use the data and come up with their own way to present it.  Discussions about  how data can be presented in different ways to study different concepts is a valuable higher level cognitive activity for high school or college level students.   These types of activities are a way to get students to look at and begin to interpret the data from a seemingly non-science point of view.  (I’m one of those tricky teachers lol!)

3 Colleagues

 This week I enjoyed reading and commenting on these colleagues:

Alison Larson I, too, was disillusioned with the Coriolis effect…. when I was in Australia many years ago, I experimented with flushing a lot of toilets only to find it didn’t workL.  What does work to show the kids, though, is to take a dry erase (not red or permanent!) marker and as you are spinning the globe, move the marker from the equator to the poles.  Makes nice clockwise/counterclockwise lines on the earth that really shows how the wind and water patterns work!

Tommy Gossard

I love that you are using Google Earth in your classroom.  As this course goes on, I am discovering many ways to use different aspects of it in my teaching.  There is a tremendous variety of things you can do with it, even for space they have Google Mars and Google Moon (what will they think of next)!

P.S. I love the Kenai, too!

Tracy Pulido

I really like your idea about creating a circular montage with changing seasons and activities.  What a great way to decorate a classroom…maybe even decorate a new wall for each season throughout the year.   Having an elder share with the students somehow is really neat, too.  They are a resource that is often overlooked and fits in so well with the theme of this class.  Since you farm, you can really relate the cycles of the seasons and plant growth to the students – how neat!