National Science Education Standard: B Physical Science Grades 9 to 12
The little sub that could
Last April, a 6 foot, 120 pound robot called RU27 left the coast of New Jersey with a mission to be the first remote controlled vehicle to traverse the Atlantic Ocean underwater. Here’s the story of whether it made that world record.
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Keeping watch on a changing ocean
When the tiniest of particles settle onto the deepest of ocean bottoms, they can have the biggest of influences. Fisheries collapse. Tsunamis. Ecosystem shifts. But how do you look at the ocean’s entire vertical swath at once?
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The final frontier
The Inner Space Center makes visiting the bottom of the ocean easier than going to the store. And by using some of the newest technology available, it’s allowing us to study our most ancient past.
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The Prince’s Predictions, Part II
Predicting how an entire body of water circulates is no easy task. To do it in Prince William Sound up in Alaska, it took 3 ships, teams deployed in the field and in the lab, and a real balance between work and play.
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The Prince’s Predictions, Part I
Twenty years ago, an environmental disaster rocked Prince William Sound in Alaska. Today, a team assembled from science, government and beyond is trying to help make sure it never happens again.
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Autonomous, enormous, ingenious
Autosubs look like giant yellow torpedoes. They cruise the ocean silently. But they’re watching, listening, probing, and measuring everything as they go.
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The glide of a lifetime: Part I
Oscar Schofield and Scott Glenn pilot underwater robots all over the world, sampling the ocean half a world away and saving lives in the process, but they never have to leave Rutgers University in New Jersey.
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Top models
Huijie Xue forecasts the underwater weather of the Gulf of Maine: its temperature, its salinity, and its currents. And a lot of people are tuning in.
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Cyber fiber
John Orcutt and Frank Vernon are wiring the ocean to the Internet. And their goal is to let anyone anywhere tap into the vast data stores.
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