environment - Teaching On Ice

The scale of Antarctic landscapes is incredible

Vectors - so which trace is pulling the sledge the
most forwards?

En route to our remote camp

A great explorer's photo of the Union Glacier

Twin Otter skiplanes are the taxis of Antarctica

We've come from here, we're heading that way

The tools of science, Amy holds a brush for
sweeping snow off lichens and Ruth holds an ice
axe for chipping out cryoconite

Carl checking our altitude and route on the GPS

The Antarctic landscape is simple, but spectacular

A crevasse that we spotted and dug out … we
couldn’t see the bottom

The daily food intake for two people

Sedimentary rocks spectacularly folded

Uphill sledge hauling is not something that could be
done alone

Keeping the snow of my beard was tricky

My home for five weeks

When hauling, my breath froze to my beard

Yesterday was all about sledge hauling. We moved from Patriot Hills to a camp about four hours away. We are just four tents in a vast valley; the scale of everything here is hard to comprehend! The hauling was fine until we encountered a sizeable hill, how sizeable wasn’t obvious until we got half way up and couldn’t haul any more. We anchored our sledges, put two people onto each sledge and relayed up for well over an hour. Although exhausting, it felt good to be physically active again after all the sitting around waiting to fly.

Today we walked to the other side of the glacier we’re camped on (a walk of about an hour or so) and continued to hone our scientific techniques. I’m working as a field assistant to Ruth whilst taking weather obs and we’re getting the hang of doing science in pretty extreme conditions now.

The main problem here is that everything takes so long. Getting up, getting dressed, boiling water for breakfast/drinking water and packing the rucksack/sledge takes about two hours! For breakfast I have about quarter of a pack of muesli (with a dairy milk on top it’s delicious!), a cereal bar and a chocolate bar, lunch is more cereal/chocolate bars, peanuts and haribo, dinner is boil in the bag meals (spag bol tonight) with pemmicam (don’t ask!), more haribo and drinking chocolate. The diet is fine at the moment, but I feel after four weeks it could get a little repetitive!

Overall I’m beginning to feel more comfortable in my environment. I feel safe, I feel I have the right kit and I’m able to look around and appreciate the experience much more.

If you have any comments or questions then please e-mail them to me (I cannot see comments on the blog – although please do make them so other readers can see them and respond). The e-mail address is dannyboy@bullexpeditions.com (make sure my name is in the subject line).

Here's a chilly enrichment Activity for KS2 Science, written by John Senior:

F: Found in the freezer

KS2: Science. Knowledge, skills and understanding. Living things in their environment. Pupils should be taught: about ways in which living things and the environment need protection; about the different plants and animals found in different habitats; how animals and plants in two different habitats are suited to their environment.

Links

Learning and Teaching Scotland: Climate Change

International Baccalaureate: Group 4. Experimental sciences

Summary

Imagining what is below the ice caps.

Activity

The latest discovery to excite palaeontologists − as well as everyone interested in dinosaurs and the history of animals − is the 'duck-billed' Gryposaurus. Discovered in 2004 it is only now that a picture of the life and physical shape of the two-legged dinosaur has been published.

The dinosaur clearly had a big bite, with 300 teeth and another 500 as 'spares' to grow as needed.

Discoveries such as the Gryposaurus are exciting and capture our imagination, as do the stories concerning the discovery of frozen mammoths such as happened in Siberia recently:

(MyInfoHQ.net is the provider of this Reuters' video embedded from YouTube.)

These finds offer tantalising hints as to the life and environments that existed on our planet millions of years ago.

Some questions for your pupils to consider and discuss:

As the ice-caps melt and the Antarctic 'blue crystal desert' reveals more of its surface ask your pupils to imagine:

• What fabulous creature or creatures from the past might be found as the ice melts?
• What strange and amazing plants can they imagine being found?
• What other things may be found that once lived, or were lived in, millions of years ago that the ice has frozen and preserved?

Going further

Invite your pupils to draw and make models of the imagined creatures or plants. Your pupils should be able to explain the working logic of the creatures or plants

If your pupils think that lost civilisations may be discovered as the ice retreats they can be asked to describe the lives of people and draw maps of the country as they imagined it to be.

What effect would such a 'real' discovery have on modern scientific and religious thinking?

For the full story of the Gryposaurus visit: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/7023731.stm

Information regarding the near intact mammouth found in Siberia is available at: www.geocities.com/stegob/mammoth.html

Further reading: How to Deep Freeze a Mammoth, Bjorn Kurten, Columbia University Press, New York, 1986.