A sketch of a learning sequence on fjord circulation experiments

Posted on by mglessmer

I’ve been wanting to develop a good fjord circulation experiment for a long time now — I wasn’t happy with the one we used back when I was teaching in Bergen, and then 1.5 years ago I talked with Steffi and Ailin who took over the tank experiments in Bergen a while back and we wanted to do something about it, but it just never happened. Life, you know, and jobs with other foci…

But then when I couldn’t sleep, I decided that 4:15 in the morning is a very good time to sketch out how I would develop a learning sequence on fjord circulation. Let’s see how I feel about it at a more normal hour after some more sleep, but right now I am happy with it, and excited to flesh out the sketch a little more with actual instructions for experiments. Would you be interested in reading that? And where would you look for instructions like that (except for on my blog)? I am hoping to maybe publish it somewhere “official”…

Awesome outreach collaboration to continue: We won a Bjerknes Visiting Fellowship 2018!

Posted on by mglessmer

We are excited and grateful for a great opportunity for continued collaboration that has recently presented itself: Elin won a Bjerknes Visiting Fellowship 2018 for me to visit her and the rest of her team in Bergen for a month in 2018!

We have several goals for that visit, but the main one is to develop more hands-on experiments (which we lovingly call “kitchen oceanography”), which parents, teachers, and other educators can use to get children excited about oceanography (and obviously for the grown-ups to play with, too :-)). Between Elin and me, we do already have a lot of experiments which we use regularly and recommend (for Elin’s, check out this site, and mine are here). But we would love to bring them in a different format so that they are easy to find and use, and are well integrated with the ekte data project. And then, obviously, we want to let everybody in Bergen (and all of our faithful readers) know where to find the experiments, and how to use them in science communication.

So plenty of stuff to stay tuned for! We’ll absolutely keep you posted on our progress on here!

Of a pool that sits on a merry-go-round and how we use it to investigate ocean circulation in Antarctica

Posted on by mglessmer

You know I like tank experiments, but what I am lucky enough to witness right now is NOTHING compared to even my wildest dreams. Remember all the rotating experiments we did with this rotating table back in Bergen?

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Those were awesome, no question about that. But the rotating tank I am at now? 13 meters diameter.

Yes, you read that correctly. 13 METERS DIAMETER!

I’m lucky enough to be involved in Elin Darelius & team’s research project on topographically steered currents in Antarctica, and I will be blogging on her blog about it:

Follow the blog, or like us on Facebook!

In any case, don’t miss the opportunity to see what is going on in a tank this size:

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Yes, they are both INSIDE the tank. Elin (on the left) is sitting on the tank’s floor, Nadine (on the right) is climbing on the topography representing Antarctica. For more details, head over to the blog!

Discovering Google Earth Engine

Posted on by mglessmer

Remember we did an expedition learning course in Kiel bight a while ago? I wish I had known about Google Earth Engine then already. Even without signing up (which I will do as soon as time permits) you have access to their timelapse: a global composite of satellite images, which results in a cloud-free 32-year video of the Earth’s surface. And the best feature: It’s zoomable! So you can look at your favourite beach (or any region of the world you are most interested in — disappearing rain forests? Growing cities? Shrinking glaciers? (Careful — there is some weird aliasing of the seasonal signal in there)).

For me, it’s obviously coast lines. And especially the beaches of Kiel bight: You see sand moving around and the beach shape changing to what we see today. What a great motivational intro for any course on coastal dynamics!

So super excited about finding this tool that I had to share immediately :-)

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Posted on by mglessmer

Absolutely fascinating to watch: The German Maritime Search and Rescue Service’s tug driving up on one of their larger vessels. Good thing I volunteered to watch all our equipment at the Port of Maasholm when we were driving back from the teacher training at Lotseninsel and everybody else was on a later boat… ;-)

I only realized too late what was going on, so I didn’t get a movie, but the small boat sped up and just drove up the stern of the other boat. So cool!

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