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The Fragile Ice
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The IPY/NSTA Symposium: The Fragile Ice took place at the Snowbird/Brighton
rooms at the Marriott Downtown Hotel in Salt Lake City, UT, on Friday, December
8, 2006. Fifty educators were in attendance, representing the states of Arizona,
Arkansas, California, Colorado, Indiana, Kansas, Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota,
Missouri, New Hampshire, New Mexico, Ohio, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah,
Vermont, and Wyoming. Forty of the 50 participants were NASA Explorer School teachers.
The team of presenters included Dr. Waleed Abdalati from NASA's Goddard Space Flight
Center, Dr. Mary Albert from U.S. Army ERDC Cold Regions Research and Engineering
Lab in Hanover, New Hampshire, Brian Campbell from NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center,
and Sandy Shutey from Butte High School in Montana. The symposium focused on the
health of the artic regions of the world based on data collected from ice core samples
and satellite observations. NSTA would like to thank all the participants and the
presenters for a job well done!
The program started with an introductory administrative session during which Flavio
Mendez, Symposia and Web Seminars Program Manager at NSTA, familiarized participants
with the contents of their folders, including the agenda, the talent release form,
the pre-assessment form, and the session's learning outcomes. All four presenters
started the program with an overview and the goals of the International Polar Year
(IPY). IPY promises to advance our understanding of how the Earth's remote polar
regions impact global climate systems, to bring about fundamental advances in many
areas of science, and to fire the enthusiasm of students for future careers in science,
technology, engineering, and math.
This brief overview was followed by Dr. Albert's presentation about her research
of the arctic regions using ice cores. During her presentation she explained how
snow crystals join forces to store information about current and past climate. In
many ways scientists that study ice cores are "science detectives" trying to decipher
past climate conditions using ice cores as the evidence.
Ms. Sandy Shutey followed Dr. Albert's presentation with a hands-on activity for
the classroom. In the activity participants made an ice core using play-doh of different
colors and a straw. They role-played the process of extracting material from the
deepest part of the ice sample (play-doh) and then analyzed their "core" by looking
at the different colors inside the straw. While the teachers participate in the
activity, both Dr. Albert and Ms. Shutey walked around the room answering questions
from the participants.
After a short break, Dr. Abdalati began the second part of the symposium with a
presentation about how the polar ice cover is changing and why it matters. Dr. Abdalati
uses a NASA satellite called ICESat, (ice, clouds, and land elevation satellite)
for his observations. ICESat was launched in 2003 and its data is available at http://icesat.gsfc.nasa.gov/.
The ICESat provides topography and vegetation data around the globe, in addition
to the polar-specific coverage over the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets. From
ICESat, scientists are learning that the arctic regions are melting due to the increase
of global temperatures. These changes is affecting the polar bear population, fish
living in the region, and people around the world that live in coastal areas. At
the end of his presentation Dr. Abdalati answered many questions regarding global
climate change and government policies.
The last presentation of the day was given by Mr. Brian Campbell, educator at NASA's
Goddard Space Flight Center. Mr. Campbell modeled an activity where participants
analyzed and interpreted a time series of satellite images and identified major
landmass changes. At the end of the program teachers received a plethora of educational
materials and a DVD they can show the students in the classroom.
For more information contact symposia@nsta.org
Underwritten in part by NSF, NASA, and NOAA.
