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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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