UMaine Student, School Teachers Team Up to Win Award for Science Education Project
Contact: Leigh Stearns, Climate Change Institute, 207-581-1491; Joe Carr, Dept. of Public Affairs and Marketing, 207-581-3571
ORONO–Learning how glaciers move could be like watching corn grow. Things
don’t happen very fast. However, University of Maine graduate student
Leigh Stearns has found a way to make the learning fun and, in the
process, help students understand how to do science.
She and four Maine teachers — Margaret
Morton of South Bristol Elementary School, Darrell King of Brewer High
School, Diane Damone of Old Town High School and Stephen Dixon of
Nobleboro Central School — all participants in UMaine’s NSF GK-12 Teaching
Fellows Program, won an award at an international scientific conference in
Beijing, China April 15 for their poster describing the use of “flubber”
to study glacier movement. “Flubber” is a homemade concoction of glue,
Borax powder and water that, when mixed to the right consistency, can be
used to demonstrate the slow but inevitable movement of ice sheets and
mountain glaciers.
Their poster was titled “Educating K-12
Students about Glacier Dynamics and Climate Change: an NSF Program.” The
international Climate and Cryosphere conference
was sponsored by the World Climate Research Program April 11-15. The China
Meteorological Administration was the host.
The purpose of the conference was to share
information about the relationship between the climate and cold regions
covered by ice, snow and permafrost. “The teachers were excited about what
they heard and were taking pictures of presentations to take back to their
schools,” says Stearns. The NSF GK-12 Teaching Fellows Program supported
the teachers’ attendance at the conference.
In her research, Stearns studies the growth
and decline of large ice sheets, such as those in Antarctica and
Greenland. She uses data from satellites to determine changes in ice
sheets over large areas. As an NSF GK-12 Teaching Fellow, she has visited
the classrooms of teachers who attended the conference to conduct science
lessons related to her field of study.
“My goal is to help students realize that
there are many different factors affecting how glaciers flow,” she says.
“They often think there’s only one factor, temperature. And some think
that the colder it (the ice) is, the faster a glacier will move.”
In fact, warmer temperatures can promote
faster ice movement, she says. “The temperature range of ‘flubber’ greatly
exaggerates the natural range of ice temperatures,” notes the award
winning poster, but Stearns’ lessons using the material show that glaciers
are subject to a variety of driving forces. Other factors at work include
the slope, shape and texture of the ground over which the ice flows.
In the classroom, Stearns teaches students
to make “flubber” and then carry out experiments in a plastic rain gutter.
By varying the slope or changing the surface texture of the gutter with
sandpaper, oil or aluminum foil, students can change how fast the “flubber”
moves. They also freeze the material to see how that affects movement. By
sticking toothpicks into it as it moves, they can see how forces acting on
the material change its internal structure.
“‘Flubber’ will deform as it moves down the
slope, and if you pull it fast enough, cracks will form, similar to
crevasses in glaciers,” says Stearns.
Ultimately, Stearns hopes that by