Questions For UUUUU! Options

[Jillian and Madeline]

What kind of equipment do you guys use over there? :blink:
Why do the voices sound different over the phone :D ? :huh:
Please answer our questions and talk to us soon. Thanks! :D
-Jillian and Madeline- Mrs. Barlow's students

[Lee_Cooper]

Hi Jillian and Madeline,

I just had the chance to answer a question from Hannah about what we are studying, so I hope you won't mind too much if I just repeat that part as an answer:

Just to give you one example, we are studying some of the materials that are in the ocean that are made by plants, such as chlorophyll, and how long it takes for that chlorophyll to get to the bottom of the sea, and then we are trying to determine how much of that chlorophyll is immediately used, and what effects that has on the animals that live on the bottom. These invertebrates are the ones that some of the big mammals like walrus and gray whales feed on, as do some of the ducks that dive to the bottom of the ocean, so it is important for us to study these connections in the food web. We use equipment for this part of the study, such as a fluorometer, which tells us how much cholorophyll is in the water, and filters, and pumps to force the chlorophyll and plant cells up against a filter. For collecting animals and sediments from the bottom, we use van Veen grabs and a HAPS corer. I think Mrs. Barlow told me that she has put some pictures of this equipment on the TREC website under pictures.

The telephone voices sound a little funny because our voices have to go up from the ship to space to a satellite and then back down to earth in North Carolina. They sample just a bit of our voices so the file sizes for the whole voice that you hear re-generated on the phone is small. That way re-creating our voices doesn't take up as much space on the connection going into space and back to land.

Hope that is helpful and let me know if you have any other questions.

Lee Cooper