Dispatches from Sea >>
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| March 2007 |  Laura Preston, educator, UNH/Salem High School, Salem, NH. |
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| April 2007 | |||||||
April 23, 2007
What does the bottom of the ocean have in common with your own backyard?
If you were going to teach kids about the deep-ocean, how would you do it? For most kids, the closest they come to the ocean is a day or two at the beach. It’s an unknown realm and the deep-ocean is particularly remote and alien. How do you help kids understand that although the deep ocean seems different (and indeed IS different in many ways), it also functions under the same physical laws as operate in their own environment. When you peel back the layers, perhaps these very differences can help kids better understand certain concepts - through comparison. This is the idea behind the FLEXE project. FLEXE stands for “From Local to EXtreme Environments” and is a new NSF-funded GLOBE project ().
FLEXE is a collaborative project between deep-sea scientists of the Ridge2000 community, education experts at Penn State University, and the GLOBE program, a worldwide web-based education program where students learn science through collaborations with scientists. The aim of FLEXE is to help kids understand important Earth Systems Science concepts through comparison of their local environment with the deep-sea. The project is in its first year but we are testing a few components of the future system during this cruise. In particular, we are exploring a way to help kids read and understand actual data through a web-based dialog with scientists. It’s called the FLEXE Forum. For three weeks now, students in a handful of schools around the states have been studying temperature data – how temperature changes from surface to deep-ocean waters, how hydrothermal vents can be extremely hot (~360ËšC!), and how plumes from these vents cool to 2ËšC as they rise up in the water column. ĚÇĐÄ´«Ă˝s have been challenged to think about the source of energy in this extreme environment, and how this is different from home. Along the way, we’ve used the Forum as an opportunity to tell the kids about some pretty cool technology (like titanium-wrapped high-temperature probes) and innovative ways of collecting data (like the Alvin “elevator rides” where they let the buoyancy of a hydrothermal vent plume carry the sub up while thermometers attached to the sub recorded temperatures). Since the web is a visual medium, we try to incorporate pictures and stories as much as possible in the FLEXE Forum. Here’s an example of a short one that explains what helps Alvin float in spite of its 38,000 lbs of weight.Â
 The submersible Alvin sits in its hanger aboard the R/V Atlantis. Alvin’s white outer shell is made of syntactic foam. Although the sub weighs 38,000 lbs in air, this foam helps keep Alvin afloat in seawater. |
 Alvin Pilot-in-Training, Anton Zafereo, takes a moment from his work to explain the floatation systems on the sub. Here, he points out the thick layer of foam wrapped around the titanium sphere that houses the observers. |
 Anton finds a piece of the foam used to keep the submersible afloat. He explains that the foam is made up of tiny glass beads filled with air. The foam is actually heavy – in air. |
 Believe it or not, this piece of foam weighs almost 30 pounds! |
 But look what happens when you put the float in water. Think it will sink? |
 Hey, it floats! So that’s what helps keep Alvin buoyant. |
Perhaps the most important promise of the FLEXE project will be to help make science real for kids, to help them learn to make observations and ask questions about their own environment. As the FLEXE Forum wraps up this week, students are comparing what they learned collecting temperature data in their own environment with what they’ve learned about the deep-sea. We are looking forward to hearing their thoughts and final questions. There is no shortage of fun topics to share with kids about this extreme environment. The only challenge is fitting it all into the hours of the day.
Tomorrow, Laura will tell you how the Jason crew uses the power of fiber optics to get data from the seafloor to the ship’s computers.
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