science on ice

Science On-Ice

The first 3 meters of sediment core arrived last night at 10:30pm! The

schedule will be kicking into high gear soon. The on-ice portion of

the ANDRILL science effort will encompass nearly 4 months by the time

the last member leaves the ice at the very end of December. A work

crew came in at the end of August at WINFLY (winter fly in) to break

out the containers in which the drill rig was stored at Scott Base,

tractor train it out to the site, and set it up. The drill team came

in at the start of October to start lowering the sea riser into the

ocean, deploying the drill string, and start drilling. The majority of

the science team came in on the same day I did (the 9th - I've been

here a week already!) Drilling should finish up by the start of

December and the science and drill site teams will leave by mid-

December. The folks breaking down and storing the drill rig for the

winter should be done by the end of December. (Thanks to Jeremy Ridgen

for the photo.) Of course, December isn't winter down here, but mid

December is the time of summer when the sea ice starts becoming less

stable and we want to be very safe with a heavy drill rig and camp out

on the sea ice.

The main scientific goal for this portion of the SMS project is core

characerization - otherwise known as description. This was one of the

filters used to reduce the number of samples requested for our on-ice

time. Scientists wishing to get samples to begin to answer specific

research question were asked to wait til the off-ice portion of the

SMS project. At this time, all teams from 50+ different institutions

are working as a single unified group to get as many descriptive

pieces of information about the core as possible to use communally.

After we leave the ice, the science teams return to their home

institutions with their on-ice samples and the descriptive data

generated by the entire group. This information will be used to plan

their next set of sample requests - these ones targeted towards

answering specific scientific questions about the historical

environment of Antarctica.

Make sure to check the other ANDRILL educator's blog entries, everyone

has a different perspective and topics that they have chosen to write

about! Some of my current favorites are Kate's Oct 12 entry about

getting dressed for work here (with video), Robin's Oct 15 entry about

surviving Happy Camper School (I still have to do that), Bob's Oct 15

entry about getting to the core (with prizes), and Ken's Oct 12 entry

about ways to get to an Antarctic office.

Try this: Collect a large group of rocks, hopefully with some which

are very different from one another and some which are very similar to

each other - there should be a range in the characteristics of your

rocks. My sample of McMurdo road gravel in the picture doesn't have

much variation. Get into partner pairs. One partner leaves the room

while the other chooses a rock. The partner with the rock should

observe it carefully and record their observations in their science

notebook. If you need a challenge, use only your sense of smell and

touch to describe the rock! Once the description is complete, put the

rock back and give the description to the partner who was out of the

room. The second partner has to find the same rock his or her partner

had using only the description. Think carefully about the features you