other Archives - Adventures in Oceanography and Teaching

Guest post by Alice Langhans: Scientific reasons why the ocean boosts mental health

January 31, 2019

My friend Alice runs a really interesting Instagram account that I love following. She posts about being a PhD student in physics didactics, does #experimentalfriday (which you might remember from her…

Playing with roll wave animations

January 30, 2019

I love how powerful Powerpoint is, at the same time there surely is a way out there to create these kind of animations with a little less copy & pasting,…

Fictitious forces (4/5): Coriolis – how not to teach it

January 26, 2017

Some demonstrations are really not as clever as we thought they might be. We have talked about how to teach aspects of the Coriolis force recently, and just to spice it…

Reflections in a cylinder

November 11, 2015

Sometimes you find the most exciting examples in the most random places. Like here, for example: Straight lines being reflected on a cylinder.

On vorticity

May 25, 2015

I’ve promised a long time ago to write a post on vorticity (Hallo Geli! :-)). So here it comes! Vorticity is one of the concepts in oceanography that is often…

Transit of Venus and upcoming solar eclipse on March 20th!

March 16, 2015

In 2012, I happened to be at an ESWN workshop in Madison, WI, when, during one of the breaks, one of the participants mentioned that it might be possible to get…

How can we use interactive flow simulations in teaching of hydrodynamics?

February 27, 2015

That was quite a teaser on Wednesday, wasn’t it? I said I had the solution to any hydrodynamics problem you might want to illustrate. So here we go: I recently…

Exploding water balloons – again!

February 20, 2015

I am usually very motivated to write posts for this blog, but for some reason today I’m not. I have interesting posts scheduled for next week, don’t you worry, but today was…

Guest post: ‘OCEAN DRIFTERS – a secret world beneath the waves’

February 16, 2015

Today, I am very excited to share with you a guest post by Dr Richard Kirby, who recently produced an amazingly beautiful film on plankton (linked at the very bottom…

Dictionary oceanography terms English-Norwegian-German – Work in progress: we need you!

February 6, 2015

For anyone interested: a couple of years ago we started working on a collection of translations of oceanography terms in English, Norwegian and German. If you find it useful, please…

Designing exercises with the right amount of guidance as well as the right level of difficulty

January 14, 2015

An example of one topic at different levels of difficulty. Designing exercises at just the right level of difficulty is a pretty difficult task. On the one hand, we would…

“Isostasy” of ships

December 15, 2014

Empty ships look weird. Since we talked about the ship-and-anchor thing last week (you know – what happens to the water level when an anchor that was previously stored…

Balls balancing on water jets

October 20, 2014

Water is just endlessly fascinating. When I was recently at the ThinkTank science museum in Birmingham, UK, they had water fountains that you could balance balls on, like so: Even though it…

Double overflow

August 30, 2014

Because sometimes one overflow simply isn’t enough. Finn’s group came up with – and ran – an overflow experiment with many different densities and even more colors. While the movie didn’t…

Tagebuch – Tag 7

August 28, 2014

Von Carolin und Marie Am heutigen Tage wurden auch das Salz, die Dichte und die Wellen endgültig überführt. Das, was jetzt noch alles abschließt, ist die morgige Gerichtsverhandlung. Darauf haben…

Hadley cell circulation – slow rotation

August 28, 2014

In order to not be in the eddying regime, this time we are rotating our tank as slowly as possible. Since we ran the Hadley cell experiment the other day,…

Happy Birthday, my dear blog!

August 28, 2014

Adventures in Oceanography and Teaching has been around for a full year today! So today marks the first anniversary of this blog’s existence. Coincidentally, it also marks another anniversary – congratulations,…

Tagebuch – Tag 6

August 27, 2014

Von Carolin und Marie Heute haben sich die Lehrlinge gegenseitig ihre beantworteten Fragen vorgestellt. Vollständig überführt wurden zurzeit das Klima und die Strömungen, die Gezeiten und das Eis. Beim Salz…

Overflows

August 27, 2014

The unavoidable tank experiment when playing with Rolf ;-) After the first attempt – embarrassingly shown by the instructors – failed miserably, one of our groups ran the overflow experiment successfully.…

Currents on soap bubbles

August 27, 2014

There are currents and eddies and whirls everywhere! Today, Rolf showed us currents on soap bubbles. Check out the movie below for moving pictures!

Tagebuch – Tag 5

August 26, 2014

Von Carolin (12) und Marie (13) Am heutigen Tage wurden die gesammelten Hinweise genauestens dokumentiert. Dann begannen die Lehrlinge ihren Tätern weiter auf die Schliche zu kommen. Es wurde getestet,…

Dropping slinky

August 26, 2014

The spring first pulls together, and only then falls to the ground. I saw this video of a falling slinky from Veritasium some time ago and ever since wanted to film it myself, so here…

More interference of waves, this time as seen “at sea”

August 25, 2014

“At sea” in quotes, because technically we were at the mouth of the Weser river… But still! (deutscher Text unten) The really exciting thing working with the kids here at…

Cruise on RV Uthörn

August 25, 2014

Picture dump – in german only today, sorry. So. Noch schnell die Bilder von der heutigen Ausfahrt auf der Uthörn für alle, die es gar nicht erwarten können! Hier ist…

Tagebuch – Tag 4

August 25, 2014

Von Carolin (12) und Marie (13) Heute war der Tag der Tage: Die Detektive sind mit dem Forschungsschiff Uthörn zum Tatort gereist. Zuerst mussten die Lehrlinge sehr früh aufstehen und…

Waves and sandbanks

August 25, 2014

Creating waves in a tank. (deutscher Text unten) In the big tank, we have a paddle that is really good for making big waves. And if you create them in just…

Hadley cell experiment

August 25, 2014

Cooling and rotation combined. (deutscher Text unten) I can’t believe I haven’t blogged about this experiment before now! Pierre and I have conducted it a number of times, but somehow…

Cruise preparations

August 24, 2014

Tomorrow, we’ll all go on a cruise! (deutscher Text unten) Tomorrow, we’ll take all 17 participants on a cruise on the Weser. So today, we talked about how that is…

Hetonic explosion

August 24, 2014

Or, an experiment on this blog often known as “slumping column”. (deutscher Text unten) If you don’t scale your tilting of frontal surfaces under rotation experiment correctly, you get a phenomenon…

Tagebuch – Tag 3

August 24, 2014

Von Carolin (12) und Marie (13) Am heutigen Tage waren die Lehrlinge wieder besonders fleißig, denn sie mussten sich auf die spektakuläre Reise zum Tatort vorbereiten. Doch bevor dieses geschah,…

Forced internal waves in a continuous stratification

August 24, 2014

Plus all kinds of dyes. (deutscher Text unten) Using the continuous salinity stratification created yesterday, Rolf and Daniel conducted a really cool experiment: They forced internal waves and watched them…

Creating a continuous stratification.

August 23, 2014

And watching internal waves – a data-model comparison. (deutscher Text unten) In an experiment similar to the one done by the group looking at the effects of temperature and salinity…

Tagebuch – Tag 2

August 23, 2014

Von Carolin (12) und Marie (13) Heute sind die Detektivlehrlinge schon mitten in der Planung der Experimente, aber Meisterdetektivin Glessmer erklärt vorher noch, wie sie ein Experiment vorbereiten und durchführen sollen. Die…

Hair-dryer driven surface waves

August 23, 2014

Looking at wave length, frequency and speed. (deutscher Text unten) The wave group played with a tank and a hair dryer (the hair dryer safely away from the water, obviously) and…

Effects of temperature and salinity on density and stratification

August 23, 2014

Removing a barrier between waters of different densities and watching what happens. (deutscher Text unten) Today, one of the groups performed a classical experiment (shown for example here) – but…

Tides in a rotating tank

August 23, 2014

A first attempt where gravity (due to a tilted axis of rotation) replaces the pull of the moon. (deutscher Text unten) The movie contains both a view from a co-rotating…

Why we absolutely need toy boats at the JuniorAkademie

August 23, 2014

Luckily I’m not the only one believing that we absolutely need remotely controlled boats! – Zum Glück bin ich nicht die Einzige, die findet, dass wir ferngesteuerte Boote brauchen! Mein…

Hydraulic jumps when filling a tank

August 23, 2014

The most impressive hydraulic jump might be in the Denmark Strait, but there are others around, too! [deutscher Text unten] When filling the big wave tank with a hose, we…

The scientific method

August 23, 2014

Planning and conducting a scientific study [deutscher Text unten] Before letting loose all 17 junior scientists, we talked about the scientific method, about lab safety and common pitfalls. And now…

Tagebuch – Tag 1

August 22, 2014

Mission Ozeanographie Von Carolin (12) und Marie (13) Tag 1 Die Meisterdetektive Käse, Vogt und Glessmer wollen 17 neue Lehrlinge in 8 Tagen das Detektivleben im Hauptfall Ozean näherbringen. Kaum sind sie…

So many questions! Fragen über Fragen.

August 22, 2014

These are the questions we are hoping to answer during our 8 days at the JuniorAkademie [deutscher Text unten] 17 participants and 66 questions! We managed to cluster the topics…

Playing with remotely controlled toy boats

August 22, 2014

More toys we brought for the JuniorAkademie For the JuniorAkademie, we brought all kinds of toys. The ones that I am most excited about is this remotely controlled boat. I…

Hovercraft

August 22, 2014

Using air for reducing ship resistance and for propulsion. [deutscher Text unten] One of my favorite toys at the moment: My new hovercraft. Unfortunately, it has a couple of issues.…

Oceanography experiments deluxe: JuniorAkademie

August 22, 2014

A week-long workshop for school kids on ocean and climate, using both tank experiments and numerical models. [deutscher Text unten] Be warned: I will post a lot over the next 8…

Testing drives learning.

August 20, 2014

Once you’ve tested on something correctly once, you will remember it forever. Right? In a study on “The Critical Importance of Retrieval for Learning” by Karpicke and Roediger (2008), four different…

Miraflores Locks on the Panama Canal

August 15, 2014

My friend Astrid recently went to see the Panama Canal and I so wish I had been there, too! But luckily Astrid made tons of movies of how a ship…

Trying to understand surface tension

August 8, 2014

Who has an understanding of the effect of washing-up liquid on surface tension on a molecular level? Please help! I’ve recently shown a lot of experiments on the topic of…

Secondary rainbows

July 28, 2014

Sometimes you get lucky and see a double rainbow. But how does the second rainbow form? On my first 17th of May in Bergen, Ellen invited me to her home…

Listening to computer code

July 20, 2014

You need to check out this blog: OceanInsight – musings of a blind oceanographer. Amy Bower is a physical oceanographer who I’ve had the pleasure to hear speak on several occasions. I mainly associate her…

Similarity requirements of a hydrodynamic model

July 16, 2014

Why downscaling only works down to a certain limit When talking about oceanographic tank experiments that are designed to show features of the real ocean, many people hope for tiny…

Yet another view of the Port of Hamburg

June 30, 2014

Not all adventures are oceanographic! Last week I had the chance to join students and alumni of the interdisciplinary bachelor project at Hamburg University of Technology for a flight above the…

Floating dry dock in the Port of Hamburg

June 27, 2014

Just because it’s fascinating. On my recent trips through the Port of Hamburg one thing has fascinated me a lot – the floating dry dock. It’s right there when you…

Currents in the Port of Hamburg

June 20, 2014

But not what you think! I’ve been visiting the Port of Hamburg on all of my weekends recently. First when J&J&T came to visit and Torge described the huge thunderstorm,…

Sailing into the sunset.

June 16, 2014

I was going to take pictures for a specific blog post I wanted to write… …but then life happened and I had to concentrate on other things. We were sailing…

Interference from other demonstrations.

June 12, 2014

Why interpreting one aspect Marsigli’s experiment might be so difficult. Remember how, in this post, I discussed Marsigli’s experiment and asked why the volume of pink water seemed to have…

Separating signal from noise

June 10, 2014

It might hinder student learning when demonstration with a low signal-to-noise ratio are shown. In this post, I talked about the Roth et al. (1997) paper on 6 dimensions that might…

On asking questions

May 30, 2014

How do you ask questions that really make students think, and ultimately understand? I’ve only been working at a center for teaching and learning for half a year, but still…

Learning by thinking

May 29, 2014

Di Stefano et al. find that reflection is an important step in the learning process. I’ve always liked learning by teaching. Be it in sailing as a teenager or more…

Surface tension and washing-up liquid

May 23, 2014

How to destroy surface tension. Remember how in this post my parents sent me a picture of the experiment that I didn’t get to work out? Later the same day…

Dandelions

May 5, 2014

Making dandelion stem spirals. It’s sunny, dandelions are everywhere and not every post on this blog has to be about oceanography in the strictest sense (although you’ll see the connection…

Southern Hemisphere fascination.

April 1, 2014

How everything works the wrong way round in the Southern Hemisphere. You have probably noticed how on this blog we’ve been super careful about always maintaining Northern Hemisphere rotation when…

Advection fog

March 21, 2014

When warm, moist air is advected and brought in contact with colder surfaces. Recently I’ve been starting to think about a course I’ll be teaching later this year, and how…

Blogging as a tool for professional development

February 21, 2014

How I see blogging as helpful tool for my professional development. Before I go into how blogging helps with my professional development, there is one very important fact that I…

Call for Papers: Teaching STEM Principles through Oceanography Content

February 10, 2014

The Journal of Geoscience Education (JGE) is soliciting manuscripts for a themed issue on Teaching STEM Principles through Oceanography Content. And I am one of the guest associate editors! Check…

Help the Earth Science Women’s Network become a non-profit!

February 3, 2014

Support ESWN’s fund-raising campaign. I have been a member of ESWN for many years, on the European board since 2010 and on the Leadership Board since 2012, so clearly I…

Defying gravity. And Happy New Year!

January 1, 2014

Today I was browsing for a new laptop bag online and came across this page (and I am neither affiliated nor anything else with them, as will hopefully also become clear…

Happy Nikolaus day!

December 6, 2013

To those of you who polished their boots last night, put them outside their door, and then were all excited this morning: Happy Nikolaus day! To everybody else: It’s clearly…

Langmuir circulation, take 2

November 18, 2013

Attempt at mechanistic understanding of Langmuir circulation. After complaining about how I didn’t have mechanistic understanding of Langmuir circulation recently, and how I was too lazy to do a real literature…

Ice can flow like ketchup

October 15, 2013

Check out the very nice article “ice can flow like ketchup” by Clemens Spensberger on ClimateSnack.com. Enjoy!

Traveling circus

October 8, 2013

Stuff that I brought to Isafjördur to teach the intro to oceanography. I’ve been a fan of minimalistic travel for a while. And apparently I was ready for a new…

Teaching in Isafjördur

October 2, 2013

Teaching a block course at the University Centre of the Westfjords, Iceland. For those of you who were surprised that lately they didn’t recognize my students any more and the…

Beware of the stereotype threat

September 10, 2013

Teaching tips focussing on stereotypical behavior are harming, not helping. I was recently sent a link to an article on my university’s web pages, where a senior professor gives teaching…

Hello World!

August 28, 2013

Welcome to my blog!

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