Australia’s new Marine National Facility research vessel, Investigator, arrived on Tuesday to its home port of Hobart. The ship will soon take scientists and high-tech equipment to the watery parts of the world; to measure the weather, take samples from the sea floor and study marine life.
The ocean is a vast area to explore, and a lot about ocean life and geology is still a mystery. So what better place to have a science laboratory than out in the salt spray and rolling waves? The Investigator can carry 60 people and supplies for two months at sea. Oceanographers, marine scientists and geoscientists will be able to use the vessel to answer all sorts of questions.
To help scientists improve weather forecasting, Investigator has a heavy hat. “The weather radar on top of the mast weighs as much as a Toyota Corolla, and must be kept level as the ship pitches and rolls,” says CSIRO’s Brian Griffiths, part of the team that helped to design the ship. The device can record the height of clouds and tell if they are carrying rain, hail or snow.
The ship can also capture history by taking core samples – extracting mud and sand from the seabed using a long steel tube. “It’s like sucking up a milkshake through a straw and putting your finger over the top to keep it in,” explains Brian.
Within this muddy material is a record of the climate from about the last 800 000 years. “We can examine different species of diatoms [algae] and learn how ocean circulation patterns have reacted to changing climates like ice ages,” says Brian. “It’s similar to looking at [growth] rings in trees.”
After years of designing and building Investigator, it is now in Tasmania and getting ready for research.
This video shows the research vessel Investigator during one of the scientific sea trials. It was taken using a GoPro camera and a drone. Image: CSIRO
Quiz questions
Which animal nests in an eyrie?
What shape is the Milky Way?
Platelets are found in which bodily fluid?
What colour are NASA’s pumpkin suits, used for emergency situations?
Which of these is a mineral? Is it a) water, b) ice or c) granite?
In class with Brian Cox
School livestream Tuesday, 14 October
Don’t miss this exclusive opportunity to meet a superstar of science, Brian Cox. Before his Making Sense of the Cosmos Australian tour, Brian will take time to answer students’ burning questions – about almost anything! This will be Brian’s only school session in Australia. Click here for more information and registrations.
PLUS don’t forget to register your class to The Science Inspiration, a livestream event this Wednesday, 17 September.
Try this: Vacuum straws
Cut a tea bag open with scissors. Pour the tea leaves into a cup of water and keep the bag.
Take a bendy straw and point the short end towards you. Wrap plasticine 4 cm from the end.
Insert the short end of the straw into the empty tea bag, and secure it with plasticine.
Take a second straw and point the long end towards you. Wrap plasticine 2 cm from the end.
Press the pieces of plasticine around the straws together.
Insert the tea bag and straws into a bottle. Cover the opening with plasticine and check it's sealed.
Place one straw into the cup of water and tea leaves, and suck on the other straw.
You will need
Tea bag
Scissors
Paperclip
Small cup filled with cold water
Two bendy straws
Ruler
Plasticine or modelling clay
Bottle, either 600 mL or 1.25 L will work
What to do
Look at where the tea is held inside the tea bag. Open the tea bag by gently tearing, undoing staples or unfolding it. Use the scissors to cut a short edge of the tea bag open and pour the tea leaves into the cup with the water. Keep the empty tea bag for step 4. Check your empty tea bag – you want one that is open at one end and closed at the other. If your tea bag is open at both ends, you need to close one end by folding the edge over and using the paperclip to hold it closed.
Bend the two straws.
Place one straw on the table so the short end is pointing towards you. Measure a line 4 cm from the short end. Wrap plasticine around the straw at the 4 cm mark.
Take the empty tea bag from step 1. Insert the short end of the straw into the open end of the empty tea bag. Use a bit more plasticine to hold the empty tea bag in place around the end of the straw.
Now place the other straw on the table so the long end is pointing towards you. Use the ruler to measure a line 2 cm from the long end. Wrap a small piece of plasticine around the straw at the 2 cm mark.
Press the pieces of plasticine around the straws together. Now the plasticine is holding the two straws in place.
The plasticine around the straws is going to be the lid on the bottle. Insert the tea bag and straws into the bottle, and use some extra plasticine to cover the opening of the bottle, so it seals tightly around the two straws.
Now, sticking out the top of the bottle, you should have one straw that is upright, and one straw that is bent to the side.
Test that the bottle is sealed and that air can only flow between the straws. Do this by sucking on the upright straw and placing your finger near the open end of the other straw. You should feel some suction on your finger. If you can’t, then adjust the plasticine to make a better seal.
Once you have a good seal, bend the sideways straw into the cup with the water and tea leaves. Suck on the upright straw. The water from the cup will flow into the bottle, and the empty tea bag will collect the tea leaves.
What’s happening?
When you drink through a straw, it seems like you’re sucking the liquid up. But it’s actually the air around you that is doing a lot of the work!
Air is all around us, and constantly pushing on things. The cup of water in this activity is open to the air in the room, and the air is pushing down on the surface of the water. When you drink through a straw, you remove some of the air inside the straw. That puts the air in the straw at lower pressure compared to the air in the room. The air in the room pushes down on the water, and forces it into the straw and up to your mouth.
In this activity, we have an extra object – the bottle. The bottle is sealed so that air can only travel between the two straws. Just like when you are drinking, when you suck on the straw, you remove some of the air inside the bottle. This creates an area of low pressure inside the bottle compared to the air in the room. The air in the room pushes down on the water and forces the water up the other straw where it collects in the bottle.
Applications
Vacuum cleaners work in a similar way to drinking straws – using air pressure. An electric fan forces air out the exhaust, creating an area of low air pressure inside the vacuum. The air in the room then flows into the vacuum, as it moves from high pressure to low pressure.
Vacuum cleaners collect dust. To do this, some vacuum cleaners use a bag with small holes that allows air through, but traps the dust. Other vacuum cleaners make the air swirl around so that the dust collects inside one part of the machine. Either way, the dust can be removed later on.
A weather research radar on the main mast of research vessel Investigator can collect data from 150 kilometres around the ship, and up to 20 kilometres into the atmosphere. Watch this animation on how it works.
Quiz answers
An eagle nests in an eyrie.
The Milky Way is a spiral galaxy.
Platelets are found in blood.
NASA’s pumpkin suits are orange in colour. To be more precise, the colour is international orange.
b) Ice is a mineral, when it forms in nature and not your freezer. It’s the most common mineral on the Earth’s surface. Granite is a rock, not a mineral.
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