Polar Science Station Home

Elements

The Project
The Team
Marian's Daily Journal
Learning Activities
Glossary
Contact Marian
 
Cruise Track
Current Time and Temperature at Palmer Station
Current time and temperature at Palmer Station
Other Special Reports

Pop Goes Antartica
 
spacer

The Team


Chlorophyll Concentrations, the Antarctic Circumpolar Current
Used with permission of Explorations Scripps Institution of Oceanography/UCSD

Be sure to look at other polar learning activities within Polar Science Station

ActivitiesSend an email message directly to some scientists!

A Long Cold Journey to the Southern OceanA Long Cold Journey to the Southern Ocean
This is a companion website for this cruise. It is the work of the team of scientists from the University of Massachusetts-Boston. They will be sending online journals back to this website. They also want to receive email from students. They will answer the messages they receive.

 

mtyson@literacyworks.orgActivitiesSend an email message to Marian Tyson, the teacher on the ship!

mtyson@literacyworks.org
Marian Tyson is an adult education instructor at Clatsop Community College, Astoria, Oregon. She is looking forward to receiving email messages with questions about shipboard life. If you want to know something about the food, for example, ask Marian and she will talk to the cooks.

 

ActivitiesFind the ship and track its passage through the Southern Ocean!

http://www.sailwx.info/shiptrack/researchships.phtmlLook on the main menu bar for the link to the R/V Nathaniel B. Palmer and its track across the ocean. The ship’s call sign is WBP3210. Follow the ship’s cruise track. Using the data on the online table

  1. Plot the ship’s position (latitude and longitude) on a map for each day.
  2. Make a graph of the air temperature and the water temperature over time.
  3. Convert the temperatures in Celsius into Fahrenheit.
  4. Graph the wind speed and wind direction.

 

ActivitiesRead the online journals

Marian's Daily JournalMany of the journals have interviews with the ship’s crew and with the scientists. Read about their lives. How did they find the jobs they have now? What are the “secrets to success” that they suggest? What do they say about how they use math in their work and lives? Write about what you discover, or tell someone else about it. Compare the answers given by different people to the same questions.

 

ActivitiesLearn about Antarctic Animals:

http://photolibrary.usap.gov/Antarctic Photo Library
There are many categories of photos at this site. Look under “wildlife” for great photos.

Antarctic Fauna
This gallery features animals living in Antarctica. Some of them are well known, and some of them are rarer.

http://www.70south.com/resources/antarctic-animalsAntarctic Animals
The 70South website features photos of Antarctic animals from krill to whales.

Polar Nights
Find out why the researchers have a short period of “daylight”

 

 

ActivitiesDiscover who the Shackleton Fracture Zone is named for, and why he deserves that honor

http://www.amnh.org/exhibitions/shackleton/expedintro.htmlThe Endurance: Shackleton’s Legendary Antarctic Expedition
Learn about Sir Ernest Shackleton and his famous expedition in the history of Antarctic exploration. This took place in the area where the scientist and crew will work aboard the RV Nathaniel B.Palmer. The Shackleton Fracture Zone is named for this Antarctic explorer.

 

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/shackleton/Shackleton’s Voyage of Endurance
In October and November 1999, NOVA journeyed into ice-choked Antarctic waters and onto the shores of rugged Elephant and South Georgia Islands as we followed in the footsteps of Sir Ernest Shackleton.

 

 

 

ActivitiesDesign your own plankton

http://octopus.gma.org/space1/plankton.htmlCreating Plankton
Design your own “ocean wanderer” in this activity from the Gulf of Maine.

 

Adobe PDF FileHow Plankton Prevent Sinking
Design a model of plankton that will slowly sink to the bottom of a tank. This activity is from the UCLA Ocean Globe project.

Adobe PDF FilePlankton Lesson Plans, UCLA Ocean Globe Project

 

 

ActivitiesInvestigate these multimedia learning activities

http://www.learningdemo.com/noaa/Learning Objects from Ocean Explorer (NOAA)
Click on the links to Lessons 1, 7, and 8 for interactive multimedia presentations and learning activities on Plate Tectonics, the Water Cycle, and Ocean Currents

 

 

ActivitiesLearn about Climate and Ocean Currents

Adobe PDF FileClimate and Currents Lesson Plans from the UCLA Ocean Globe project

 

ActivitiesRead about the SFZ cruise in 2004

http://www.harbor2.umb.edu/zhou/bwz06.htmPlankton Community Structure and Iron Distribution in the Southern Drake Passage
A website developed by Meng Zhou University of Massachusetts Boston

 

 

http://www.spg.ucsd.edu/antarcticareu/Explore Antarctica!
A website developed by Nigel Delaney of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography

 



© 2001-2006 Polar Science Station
This site is designed and maintained by Literacyworks and is part of Western/Pacific LINCS
and the LINCS Science & Numeracy Special Collection

NSF Office of Polar Programs, Antarctic Sciences Section
This special report was made possible by the NSF Office of Polar Programs, Antarctic Sciences Section, Award Nos. ANT04-44134 University of California-San Diego Scripps Institution of Oceanography (B. Gregory Mitchell, Farooq Azam, Katherine Barbeau, Sarah T. Gille, Osmund Holm-Hansen); ANT04-43403 University of Hawaii (Christopher I. Measures, Karen E. Selph); ANT04-44040 University of Massachusetts Boston (Meng Zhou); ANT04-43869 Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (Matthew A. Charette),  for the study entitled "Collaborative Research: Plankton Community Structure and Iron Distribution in the Southern Drake Passage".