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CU Museum and LTER present a special online session where freshly-dispatched, intrepid scientists, ZOOM back to Boulder, directly from McMurdo Station, Antarctica to talk about the lake, stream and soil research being done in the the McMurdo Dry Valleys. Dr. Michael Gooseff, PI, McMurdo Dry Valleys LTER, provides an insider’s overview of The McMurdo Dry Valleys Long Term Ecological Research (LTER) project plus a LIVE, Life From Antarctica virtual check-in with team members (Mia Vanderwilt, Anna Wright and Kathy Welch) about their research and what it is like to live and work in the world’s southernmost continent!

Funded by an NSF Advancing Informal STEM Learning (AISL) grant, CU Science Discovery staff, educators from Rutgers University, and Dr. Rachael Morgan-Kiss from MCM/Miami University, Ohio, developed a 5-week-long virtual after school program that offered them the experience to analyze and interpret data collected in the McMurdo Dry Valleys. 

We collaborated with graduate students in the MCM LTER to design a board game about the challenges of life and research on the ice, and then we made it using a laser cutter and 3D printed materials.

As part of the Polar Literacy project, we developed an activity to playfully explore the abundance and diversity of protists in two lakes in the Dry Valleys, using data from PI Rachel Morgan-Kiss.

This is an activity to demonstrate how holes form on glaciers, creating liquid water habitats for microorganisms in a frozen landscape.

This is a great activity for introducing weather data and what we can learn from ice cores. In this activity, developed by Eric Carpenter, students study graphs of wind, temperature and snowfall, and make their own simulated ice cores.

In MCM5 we ran a series of professional development workshops for teachers where they learned alongside their students about various aspects of earth and space science. One unit of the workshop focused on Antartica and challenged students to use a physical model of the sun and Earth to explore patterns in radiation and sunlight throughout the year, and how that determines the habitats we find at the poles and in the alpine. Access the materials used in this program here. 

We love from the Byrd Polar and Climate Research Center. It's a great way to demonstrate glacial movement and anatomy to people of all ages using flubber. 

Sure, everything microscopic is tiny to our eyes. But there's astonishing variation in size even among the tiniest things! Play our matching game to learn more.