Research into climate change and Greenland ice sheet melting - significant ocean rise basically inevitable

  A new study of Greenland's rapidly melting ice sheets concludes, using a conservative model, that oceans will rise at least 10 inches over the coming years/decades. While no timeline was given, this melting will occur regardless of what humans do to curb greenhouse gas emissions. The reason is that the melting cycle has already been put into motion, and the combination of warming ocean temps, water from melted ice (that then melts more ice...sort of like pouring liquid water on ice cubes in a sink will melt the ice), and the fact that warming water expands in volume, means this rise is inevitable. Also, using sophisticated radar techniques, dozens of lakes below the surface ice have been discovered - this means there is melting happening underneath the ice that we had not observed before. Often some computer models were underestimating the rate of melting, and as further research is done more mechanisms for melting are being discovered to help us understand why the rates are quickening.

What's significant about Greenland's ice sheets is that they are land-based. They are not icebergs already in the water. If an iceberg melts, there won't be any rise. However, run-off water from land is new water in the ocean, and makes sea levels rise. 

Like Thanos in The Avengers, the conclusion of this study is significant rise is inevitable.

STARFORGE Astrophysical Simulations

 Friends with the CIERA Group at Northwestern University have been involved with the creation and running of STARFORGE simulation software, which provides the most detailed and accurate star formation simulations ever made and seen. You can check some out here, and learn more about what this simulation platform is. Below is NOT a photo from the Webb telescope, but rather a snapshot from a simulation!

'Quantum to Cosmos' powers of 10 resource

 An excellent Powers of 10 resource, which allows you to scan from the smallest (quantum realm) to the largest (cosmological) size scales is the Quantum to Cosmos site. Very useful and easy to use, and we in STEM can learn a lot from this!!

TED Talk: New Mindset for how we think about students, inspired by Quantum Mechanics!

  I wanted to share my TED Talk, just out, about the Quantum Revolution in Education. In order to break educators everywhere from the traditional mindset that all students will more or less get the same experience and learning from any given lesson teachers provide, we need a more realistic mindset that drives home the fact students are unique, with their own emotional and intellectual states! 

They DO NOT get the same experience from any lesson we do! We must then ACT and INTERACT with students in different ways if we really mean what we say with "No Child Left Behind." 

This mindset is inspired by quantum mechanics, of all things, so check it out. 

Weather trends over the last century - CODAP

 I came across a platform for looking at NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) data dating back to the 1890s, developed for students at the Concord Consortium. Their CODAP platform is able to allow you to analyze weather data in a variety of ways, so check it out if you have an interest in what the trends are, using weather stations around the world. 

Agent-based programming and research: Netlogo

 Northwestern University researchers created a programming platform called Netlogo some years ago, and it's likely a million students, graduate students and even professors have used this to learn how to program, run its hundreds of prewritten simulations in just about every STEM field for assignments, or used it for actual, high-level research that is agent-based. 

By agents, we mean individual objects or even organisms. Netlogo is designed to, as easily as can be done, develop programs and simulations where individual entities interact with each other by some set of rules or mathematical law. You can do orbits, for example, since this is just individual objects interacting through Newton's law of gravity. You can do growth of bacteria, since those are individual organisms that follow some statistical rule for reproduction. You can simulate forest fires since each tree is an individual organism (an agent), and the spread of fire follows a relatively simple rule (if a neighboring tree catches fire, those trees next to it will catch on fire). 

It is worthwhile to check this out. You can download it, or run it on the Web, so even ChromeBooks can use Netlogo. There is a library with hundreds of examples, and you are free to modify the code for any of them to learn the language and create your own versions of the original simulation! 

Have a good, fun summer by doing some research, at home if you wish!!

 The purpose of this site is to provide numerous ideas for real, original science research opportunities that do NOT require expensive equipment or professional labs - do these in a typical high school science lab or at home! Hundreds of ideas exist, just look through the pages to the right, and get ideas that you can take as is, or be creative and expand on them in any way you wish. The summer is a great time for any curious teen out there to give it a try! Have fun with following your curiosities, and discovering answers to unsolved questions!