Summer Institute: Planning Investigations at RTC
On Tuesday, at the Romberg Tiburon Center, we started the day like we started most days of the institute: by noticing, wondering, and interacting with science concepts. Today's starter activity was salinity. We had a model of the bay with red colored salt water sinking below blue colored fresh water. We built small hydrometers, and handled a commercial hydrometer. And we enjoyed using a super high-tech refractometer to see the percentage of salt in water samples from around the Bay.
Then we split off to walk around the RTC grounds, notice and wonder about the Bay, and begin contemplating what we might like to investigate.
We also had a guest speaker, Chris, Ikeda, come speak about his experience on a large, month-long research cruise.
Knowing a little more about what it was like for professional scientists, we had a group discussion about all the things we wondered about the Bay. We distilled these into four main topics: water quality, appearance of the surface of the water, and creatures within the water. Dividing into groups, we began planning investigations around our topics.
At the end of every day (though I did not always get a picture), we came together in a circle to express highlights from our day and our hopes (and sometimes fears!) for the future.
