Alvin Block
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Students can use the Alvin statistics in their resource guides to build a scale model of Alvin. Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution is Alvin’s home; check their Web site for drawings, photos, videos, simulations, and history of Alvin from “his” invention to plans for future submersibles. It’s also extremely instructive to students to use masking tape to delineate about a 7-ft.-diameter sphere on the floor of the classroom and let them know this is the space into which the Alvin crew of two scientists and a pilot must squeeze for the nine-hour dive duration. You can further enhance their appreciation for the cramped conditions by having students construct cardboard consoles, video cameras, computers, and data recording systems to put into the space representing the submersible. Then ask three volunteers to occupy the space and complete their class work, for the duration of a class period. This is a fun and humorous activity that will help bring scientific loftiness down to a more human scale. Use tape to create a circle on your classroom floor that matches Alvin’s dimensions: about 7 feet in diameter, or 2.1 meters. Invite students to sit in the circle and tell them that three adults fit inside Alvin for an average nine-hour dive. Talk about some of the issues this raises: what to bring, how to stay comfortable. How do the Extreme scientists deal with it? Visit the Daily Journals on the dive days under Daily Discoveries for more insight. Look through the Extreme Experiments from Extreme 2002 and find the cup experiment done during an Alvin dive, and other high-pressure experiments. Also head over to the video clip of the shrunken wig head from Extreme 2002. The Crash Course: Submarine Web Quest Use the reproducible pdf Crash Course: Submarine Web Quest to steer a search through the Internet’s murky waters for the answers to questions about how a submarine works. The outcome is artwork: a series of drawings showing various submarine processes. Submit student artwork to the Virtual Science Fair. The Shape of the Alvin to Come The new Alvin is almost here, scheduled for launch in the early 2010s. Use the reproducible pdf Alvin Updated to compare our Alvin and the submersible that is scheduled to be completed in 2009. Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution: Designing an Alvin Replacement New York Times article about the forging of the new Alvin’s cockpit: New Sphere in Exploring the Abyss, by William J. Broad, The New York Times, August 25, 2008. Interview with Cindy Lee Van Dover, Alvin pilot who led close to 50 missions to the deep ocean. Deep in the Sea: Imagining the Cradle of Life on Earth, by Claudia Dreifus, The New York Times, May 26, 2007. NEW—Web Quest: Alvin Replacement Vehicle — Almost Here! Use the reproducible pdf Alvin Replacement Vehicle — Almost Here to compare the differences between the current Alvin and the Alvin Replacement. To be an Extreme Abecedarian, all you have to know is the alphabet — and a little bit about the Extreme project! Visit the alphabetical glossary created by Dalhousie University scientist Deborah S. Kelley created for an Atlantis/Alvin cruise along the coast of Alaska. Then put together your own entries to the abecedarian based on what you learn about the Extreme research cruise. Your entry can be a definition and/or image that has to do with the Extreme project. Consider people, equipment, discoveries, environmental factors, and more. In November 2008 the Extreme expedition takes our scientists, educators, and crew aboard RV Atlantis and DSV Alvin to the hydrothermal vents at the East Pacific Rise, 9° North and Guaymas Basin. Destinations Ho! is a resource of web links to various geographic, bathymetric and false-color undersea maps for the East Pacific Rise and the Guaymas Basin areas to learn about the expedition site. Post words and phrases related to Alvin on your classroom walls. Leave space beneath for definitions and other information. Start by asking students to anticipate the meaning of these terms, to use what they already know to guess and make predictions. As they learn about the mission, they’ll find and fill in the definitions. End product: a clear view of the progress from not knowing to learning to knowing. Try these words: continental shelf, precipitate, continental slope, seismology, volcanism, ocean trench, bioluminescence, photosynthesis, chemosynthesis, symbiosis, microbe, tubeworm, electrode, sediment. You may also want to use the Vocabulary reproducible, which includes terms to define relating to geology, biology, and deep-sea exploration used in the Extreme 2008 resource guide. Inspire students to write a story set during the Extreme 2008 dive. Suggest they use actual characters (scientists, or students themselves, or others) and setting; encourage them to determine their own plots based on how their characters might react to the extreme setting, what they are searching for, and what they discover. There are three Extreme 2003 dives featured in the Dive Plans. Each dive goes to a different area of the East Pacific Rise, each plan specifies different objectives, and each crew involves different participants. The reproducible pdf Dare to Dive! contains questions that refer to one dive. Students may work independently or in groups of four or five to analyze and then compare the three dives. Students can use the Alvin statistics in their resource guides to build a scale model of Alvin. Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution is Alvin’s home; check their Web site for drawings, photos, videos, simulations, and history of Alvin from “his” invention to plans for future submersibles. It’s also extremely instructive to students to use masking tape to delineate about a 7-ft.-diameter sphere on the floor of the classroom and let them know this is the space into which the Alvin crew of two scientists and a pilot must squeeze for the nine-hour dive duration. You can further enhance their appreciation for the cramped conditions by having students construct cardboard consoles, video cameras, computers, and data recording systems to put into the space representing the submersible. Then ask three volunteers to occupy the space and complete their class work, for the duration of a class period. This is a fun and humorous activity that will help bring scientific loftiness down to a more human scale. Use tape to create a circle on your classroom floor that matches Alvin’s dimensions: about 7 feet in diameter, or 2.1 meters. Invite students to sit in the circle and tell them that three adults fit inside Alvin for an average nine-hour dive. Talk about some of the issues this raises: what to bring, how to stay comfortable. How do the Extreme scientists deal with it? Visit the Daily Journals on the dive days under Daily Discoveries for more insight. Look through the Extreme Experiments from Extreme 2002 and find the cup experiment done during an Alvin dive, and other high-pressure experiments. Also head over to the video clip of the shrunken wig head from Extreme 2002. The Crash Course: Submarine Web Quest Use the reproducible pdf Crash Course: Submarine Web Quest to steer a search through the Internet’s murky waters for the answers to questions about how a submarine works. The outcome is artwork: a series of drawings showing various submarine processes. Submit student artwork to the Virtual Science Fair. The Shape of the Alvin to Come The new Alvin is almost here, scheduled for launch in the early 2010s. Use the reproducible pdf Alvin Updated to compare our Alvin and the submersible that is scheduled to be completed in 2009. Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution: Designing an Alvin Replacement New York Times article about the forging of the new Alvin’s cockpit: New Sphere in Exploring the Abyss, by William J. Broad, The New York Times, August 25, 2008. Interview with Cindy Lee Van Dover, Alvin pilot who led close to 50 missions to the deep ocean. Deep in the Sea: Imagining the Cradle of Life on Earth, by Claudia Dreifus, The New York Times, May 26, 2007. NEW—Web Quest: Alvin Replacement Vehicle — Almost Here! Use the reproducible pdf Alvin Replacement Vehicle — Almost Here to compare the differences between the current Alvin and the Alvin Replacement. To be an Extreme Abecedarian, all you have to know is the alphabet — and a little bit about the Extreme project! Visit the alphabetical glossary created by Dalhousie University scientist Deborah S. Kelley created for an Atlantis/Alvin cruise along the coast of Alaska. Then put together your own entries to the abecedarian based on what you learn about the Extreme research cruise. Your entry can be a definition and/or image that has to do with the Extreme project. Consider people, equipment, discoveries, environmental factors, and more. In November 2008 the Extreme expedition takes our scientists, educators, and crew aboard RV Atlantis and DSV Alvin to the hydrothermal vents at the East Pacific Rise, 9° North and Guaymas Basin. Destinations Ho! is a resource of web links to various geographic, bathymetric and false-color undersea maps for the East Pacific Rise and the Guaymas Basin areas to learn about the expedition site. Identify the sound heard at the opening of the Extreme 2002 Web site. Discuss why it’s appropriate. Consider the question about what to bring along on a dive in Alvin and plan a playlist of music that would be good listening under the sea. Leading Question: Why do you think music is so important to the Extreme scientists? Sea Exploration Technology Vocabulary Post words and phrases related to Alvin on your classroom walls. Leave space beneath for definitions and other information. Start by asking students to anticipate the meaning of these terms, to use what they already know to guess and make predictions. As they learn about the mission, they’ll find and fill in the definitions. End product: a clear view of the progress from not knowing to learning to knowing. Try these words: continental shelf, precipitate, continental slope, seismology, volcanism, ocean trench, bioluminescence, photosynthesis, chemosynthesis, symbiosis, microbe, tubeworm, electrode, sediment. You may also want to use the Vocabulary reproducible, which includes terms to define relating to geology, biology, and deep-sea exploration used in the Extreme 2008 resource guide. Read the Dive Plans from 2003 dives to learn where the sub’s target on the ocean floor was on each of those three days. Consult the large-scale Alvin Navigation Map the smaller-scale East Pacific Rise Map and the Guaymas Basin Map to find the target areas for the 2008 dives. Using the Alvin Navigation Map as your guide, duplicate the map on a classroom or hallway wall using squares of colored paper: construction paper for a big map, or, for a smaller size, message pad notes in rainbow shades ($5 for a pack of hundreds at office supply stores). Discuss what each of the colors means, using the color and temperature scale that appears to the side of each map. Maps of the East Pacific Rise and Guaymas Basin in Destinations Ho! are sized to allow you to print out copies for individual students. Suggest they map Alvin’s dives on their own maps, while cooperating to map them on the wall map. Over the course of Extreme 2008, keep track of the places Alvin dives on your maps. On previous expeditions several teachers e-mailed us to ask for more information about Alvin, including the data the sub gathers. Those questions prompted the development of the Alvin dive data pages, which link to their respective dive logs. For example, see the Dive Data from Dive # 3954 on Dec. 13, 2003. The description under the dive number provides an overview of each of the data headings. AND ALSO GO TO... Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution site for a more in-depth treatment of the work done with Alvin as well as work being done on the new Alvin. OCEAN EXPLORER: Section 1: Ocean Explorers — Calling All Explorers OCEAN EXPLORER: Section 2: Seafloor Mapping — Mapping the Ocean Floor: Bathymetry NOAA/National Geographic Society Sustainable Seas Expedition: Design a Submersible |
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