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Visual Science Communications – new 100% Engagement Non-Credit Experience at UA
The best science is science communicated effectively. Dr. Cara Gibson, Prof. Karen Zimmerman, and I are developing a new experience for UA students who want to apply their creative capabilities to science communication. First, we’ll work with the Insect Discovery Outreach program, and later with Biosphere 2!
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Soil art!
I’ve had the pleasure of working with two fantastic UA art students (Luke Williams and Melissa Yepiz) through an Infographics class with Prof. Karen Zimmerman. Stay tuned for our infographic on carbon cycle tracers! As a side project, I’ve given the students some of each of the 20 soil samples from my recent study to constrain soil fluxes of carbon cycle tracers (COS and 18O-CO2, see story). I asked them to make a creative piece with the soils, highlighting differences in color, texture, etc… Luke’s piece nicely contrasts soil color using red Colorado river, gray Moab soils, and black Hawaiian soils within a geometric framework burned into wood. I’ll look forward to…
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Field tripping around Boston – MIT Experimental Atmospheric Chemistry course
It’s my fourth year as a TA for our ‘Experimental Atmospheric Chemistry’ undergraduate and graduate course at MIT, and today we have loaded up the department’s van with nitric oxide (NO) and ozone (O3) monitors, a uv radiometer, and three particulate monitors (PM 10, 2.5, and 1.0 um). As part of the ‘Pollution Exposure’ unit, we will synchronize the monitors and drive around Boston noting changes in pollutant levels and keeping notes to identify possible pollutant sources. The field trip is a good time, and this year our class has grown to ten students, which is the biggest class we’ve had since I helped develop the course in 2007 with my…
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Teaching plant biogeography for the EAPS Extreme Weather and Climate course
This week I traveled up to Mt. Washington with this year’s EAPS FPOP (Freshman Pre-Orientation Program) Discover Earth, Atmosphere and Planetary Sciences: Extreme Weather & Climate. It’s the third time I’ve acted as a TA for the program by heading up the flora and fauna section, or what is now more commonly known as “Flora with Laura.” The 3 day program is Spotlighted on the PAOC website, which describes it as being “designed to provide incoming freshmen with the opportunity to explore the science of weather and climate through an exciting combination of lectures and fluids experiments, providing a glimpse into some of the most interesting and challenging aspects of research…