Hello!
This past spring we visited Ms. Carrithers's fourth grade class at Chase Street Elementary School as part of our NSF grant outreach, and told them about the things we would be working on during this cruise. While we were there, we talked about how much pressure there is underwater and about the special instrument we have to send down to collect water from depths up to 5,000 meters. As an activity, we had the kids decorate styrofoam cup for us to bring on this cruise and send down with the rosette. Our story of the cups is a little more complicated than just sending them down and bring them back up. So here it is, told in pictures.
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| Here is Leanne stuffing the cups with toilet paper so that they don't collapse in on themselves under the pressure |
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| We put the stuffed cups in a laundry bag. There were so many from Chase Street Elementary, and from the science party onboard. |
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| Securing the bag on the rosette with lots and lots of zip ties. |
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| Deployment of the rosette with all the cups. |
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| Recovering the rosette |
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| But there were no cups. The laundry bag seam had spit open, and all but one cup was lost in the North Pacific. On the bright side, the fish have some beautiful decorations for their homes! |
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We had some extra cups, so we decorated them for Chase Street Elementary, and tried to deploy them. We were not going to give up on these kids!
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| Here is the rosette going in to the water. So far no cups had gotten loose! |
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Before sending the cups down
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| Success!!! |
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| Admiring the shrunken cups |
It was a long and emotional journey, but the important thing is that we got some shrunken cups for the kids at Chase Street Elementary! And we managed to make one for the Miller Lab back in Athens.
We will be back on land tomorrow- it's hard to believe we've been on this boat for three weeks!
See you land-lovers soon!
- Meg
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