More questions

More of your questions answered:

Which bunk are you sleeping in? I chose the bottom bunk.

What color are your sheets? I brought my own so that I could donate them to the research center. They are yellow. The teacher I am sharing a room with has penguins and igloos on her sheets.

What job do you like best? What kinds of experiments are you doing? We are making lots of careful observations about the plants and soil in this area. We are measuring these things to so that scientists can measure them again in years to come. Then they can compare their data to our data. Since we are some of the first people to be writing this data down it is called baseline data. My favorite jobs so far are digging in the soil and tree coring. I love the smell of the tree cores as they come out!

Will you use a lot of math? Yes! We are measuring or counting almost everything. We count how many cones the trees have. We measure how tall they are and their diameter. We will be counting how many rings they have. The scientists will be using our measurements to make tables, charts and graphs later.

Are you learning anything new? Yes! Every day we have a "class" to go to at night. I have learned so much about how permafrost changes the land by pushing it around. We also learned how to use new science and math tools like a clinometer, tree corer and frost probe. One of the biggest challenges that we (the teachers) are facing is that everything is measured using the metric system. It is not hard for us to measure length, but it is a bit harder to figure out how warm it will be outside when they measure temperature in degrees Celsius.

How high up are the Northern Lights? They are usually about 90-130 kilometers above sea level. CHALLENGE: How high up is that if you use the US Customary System?

How old can trees get? The trees we are coring in Churchill are between 100-150 years old, but trees can grow to be thousands of years old!

What animals have you seen? Dr. Foo Foo and I have seen some birds (most too far to identify) and lots of small spiders. We have also seen black ants, a caterpillar and an arctic hare. It had really large feet.

What does permafrost look like? It can look like snow or just regular soil. Permafrost is any ground that has been frozen for at least two years. The most important thing is that the ground has stayed at a certain temperature. What is the freezing temperature of water in degree Fahrenheit? In degrees Celsius?

So far we haven't seen any permafrost because we can't dig that far. We keep hitting rocks.

Were the cranberries a good snack? Yes. I liked them a lot.

When does the sun set? It set at 5:51 tonight. The sunrise was at 5:51 this morning. It was beautiful. If I wake up early tomorrow I'll try to take a photo of it or a video from the observation dome.