Insta takeover on snowflake formation
Back in December, I did a takeover of the Instagram account of WissKommSquad, a community of german science communicators. I translated it over new years, but somehow never published it.…
Tag: research cruise
Measuring turbulence with a microstructure sonde
One of the instruments that was used on our recent student cruise was the so-called MSS (“MicroStructure Sonde”, sometimes also called VMP, “Vertical Microstructure Profiler”) — an instrument that is…
What’s the etiquette on a research ship? “Soft skill” learning outcomes on a student cruise
While student cruises usually have a lot of desired learning outcomes related to being able to use oceanographic instrumentation and knowledge of regional oceanography, ultimately one of their purposes is…
How to use home-made surface drifters to teach oceanography
Very early knowledge about oceanography stems from beach finds that had to have been transported to that beach from far away because the finds themselves (pieces of trees, or coconuts,…
Why are they so much slower than I thought? Observing the group velocity vs phase velocity of waves
Have you ever seen a speedboat drive past, looked at its wake moving torwards you, then gotten distracted, and when you look back a little while later been surprised that…
At the end of the rainbow you’ll find … home-made surface drifters
For Lars Henrik and Harald‘s GEOF105 class we are deploying home-made surface drifters on the student cruise. Today I had the opportunity to join the cruise again, and since the weather today made…
Taking water samples
A big part of any oceanographic research cruise: Taking water samples. Here is a group of students practicing how to arm Niskin bottles that will go into the ocean open…
Home-made surface drifters
A bicycle safety flag, a plastic bucket, four paint roller trays — what are those people doing there?! Until now this might almost count as kitchen oceanography! Home-made surface drifters But it’s…
“Wimmelbild” of a research ship
Wanna know why I am drawing a research ship “Wimmelbild”*? Check out the blog post over at our #SciCommChall blog to find out why! And while you are there, why not…
The ocean really takes on the color of the sky
I guess it’s kinda obvious that the ocean always appears to be the color of the sky. On grey days, the ocean looks grey. If the sky is blue, so…
Swell and wind waves
Sometimes waves are very regular and mostly of the same length. Those are the ones that I usually talk about when I talk about interference of waves. But of course,…
Wavelets on bow wave
The other day (well, the other day when I was still at sea and wrote that blog post. Been quite a while since…), when sailing in calm waters, I noticed…
Watch the dispersion relation in action
Remember how we talked about how waves seem to propagate extremely slowly into that calm patch that occurs when a boat pulls away from a dock? Well, the other day…
Recovering an oceanographic mooring
So in my previous post we deployed a mooring (in fact, those pictures were from the deployment of several different moorings). Now how do we get such a monster back…
Deploying an oceanographic mooring
Do you want to know the full story behind the rope in the mystery picture the other day? On the recent Håkon Mosby cruise, we did a lot of mooring…
Reading the water – a new mystery picture for you!
Back by popular demand: Reading the water in my mystery pictures series! Who knows what’s going on in the picture below? You might recognize a couple of details that might…
Measuring the concentration of dissolved oxygen in sea water – Part 3 of 3 – finding the titration volume by looking at the change in color
So now we have prepared our sea water sample and are ready to start titrating to figure out the concentration of dissolved oxygen. The sample itself changes color with added…
Measuring the concentration of dissolved oxygen in sea water – Part 2 of 3 – the measuring part
So how do we actually measure dissolved oxygen concentrations from the samples we took in the last post? We are using a method called “titration” to determine the unknown concentration…
Measuring the concentration of dissolved oxygen in sea water – Part 1 of 3 – taking samples
Since my task on the recent Håkon Mosby cruise was to measure dissolved oxygen, I will give an overview over how that is done over the next couple of posts.…
Joys of a sea-going oceanographer
So you might have noticed that the last 6 weeks or so all posts had been scheduled ahead and that I was strangely absent. Yep. That’s because I was on…
A touristy post about my trip to Heligoland
I recently went on a trip to Heligoland, Germany’s only island that is far away from the mainland (70 km in this case). It was a great trip, and I…
Can you make “boring” math or physics exciting by relating it to the adventures of a research cruise in Antarctic? Elin can!
My friend Elin is currently on a research cruise in Antarctica and you really need to check out her blog. She is writing about life at sea, including the most…
Pinging, so we don’t hit the ground
I’ve been thinking about an old friends recently. I met Anton on a RV Knorr-cruise I was on in 2011, and we spent many fun night watches running CTDs. Together with…