The first lecture today was all about climate change and how it impacts on ecosystems. Like a lot of what we have seen this week, it highlights the interdisciplinary nature of a lot of scientific research. Firstly Dr Janette Lindsay showed us some of the evidence that has convinced climatologists that (a) the earth is warming, (b) CO2 concentrations are increasing, and (c) the former is mostly caused by the former. She showed us graphs of land and sea temperatures over the last 100 years and similar ones for CO2. She also took the graphs back to about a million years ago based on ice cores and tree rings, to show conclusively that anthropogenic climate change is real and needs to be addressed.
Then Dr Adrienne Nicotra let us in on her research into the impacts of climate change on alpine ecosystems, where the plants have nowhere to go if it gets too warm. Great stuff.
We then had a session about on-line learning, in particular how to use it for teacher professional development. Nothing startling in that, but the participants are at very different stages of their elearning journey, as it were, so a valuable session.
Next up was a hands-on exercise to explores some ideas about how investigations are conducted and how important they are in the new curriculum. Our group did manage to prove that cheap cat litter absorbs more water than the expensive stuff but it turns into mud, so you might not enjoy having to clean it up after your cat has used it.
Geoscience Australia was the destination for the afternoon session, and what a brilliant place it is. A place where too much geology is barely enough. The education centre has a 3D projection system to sho not only the location of earthquakes, volcanoes and tsunamies, but also their depths. Nicely shows subduction zones and other areas of plate interaction, even if it takes a bit of getting used to the wire-frame earth model they use. There are also lots of specimens, maps and other cool teaching aides in here and we all walked out laden with free stuff. We moved on to the tsunami warning centre and spoke to the duty seismologist whose job it is to monitor (with help from a sophisticated computer system) a large number of seismographs around Australia, our region and the wider world. They are looking for a big, shallow, earthquake happening offshore, as these are the ones that generate tsunamis. If they detect one, they get on the phone to the AGs department to coordinate a response. They also map most earthquakes that happen around Australia and put the details on their website (google geoscience australia earthquakes). They have a searchable database up there as well, from which a .kml file can dbe generated to plug into google earth. Very interesting.
Finally we went down into the bowels to have a look at SHRIMP, GA's mass-spectrometer dating machine? While we were there it was running a scan on some zircon crystals in rock from up in the gulf country. The results it was returning (need to be confirmed, but the machine spits out a number after every scan, does many scans on the one set of crystals and produces a regression) were in the order of 1.75 billion years old. Awesome. The machine looked a lot like the stuff we had seen in the antimatter lab
And particle accelerator earlier in the week (and works on similar principals - this is geophysics) and, sure enough, it turns out that the prototype had been developed and built at the ANU machine shop. The design has now been sold to a company in the ACT that makes them and sells them around the world. Yay us Aussies!
On the way back to the college, we stopped off at Questacon and ran amok in the various galleries and gifts hop. The staff stayed back after hours just for us (for free! You know how much teachers like hearing those words). Some brave souls dared the free-fall slide, some of us more than once. They also have a roller coaster simulator which is a lot of fun. Great place for young and old. Thanks Questacon!
We finished the week with dinner at the Tradies club in Dickson, where we had great food, great company and good fun socialising one last time. It's not for me to say whether everyone got to bed at a reasonable hour but a good time was had by all.
Saturday morning was a time for farewells, presentations and reflection. For my part, I had the best time I have had in years, met lots of great people, learned so much my brain hurts and recommend the NSTSS to anyone, primary or secondary, who has an interest in sciencE and science teaching. Special thanks to Peter and Geoff for organising it all, and to Aidan Byrne, Dean of science at ANU, for making it all possible. Goodbye to all NSTSSers, I'll see you on twitter and/or Facebook! And comment me, beeatches!
No comments:
Post a Comment