Mrs Ryan as a Scientist

Finishing my Fellowship

2010-07-14T13:50:00.000-07:00

I have now completed my 6 month Primary Science Teacher Fellowship and will return to teach my wonderful new entrant class in Room 1.
I have had many amazing science experiences and will share these with the students.
We have formed a Lower North Island science teacher cluster group so you may see some of the teachers in this photo visiting Muritai School at some stage!
I would like to thank the Royal Society of New Zealand and our principal Andrew Bird for making my fellowship possible.

Te Waewae Bay

2010-07-14T13:37:00.000-07:00

This Bay is at the very southern end of New Zealand and faces Stewart Island. Fossil bearing rocks are washed up onto the beach by the wild sea. My samples are clam shells about 4-5 million years old, embedded in sandstone.

Curio Bay, Catlin's Coast, Southland

2010-07-14T13:10:00.000-07:00

Fancy a trip to Jurassic Park?
I have recently returned from Curio Bay, where, at low tide, you can walk on the fossilised remains of a Jurassic forest floor that had been buried for 170 million years beneath river flood deposits. The tree trunks have silicified, meaning the wood has been replaced with the mineral silica, making them as hard as rock.You have to visit at low tide,as the forest floor is normally under water.

Get Ready Week

2010-06-16T02:13:00.000-07:00

Peter Walker of the Hutt Emergency Management Centre is helping me work on our get ready plan for Muritai School. Get Ready week is in term 4 and Peter will come to watch us practise our tsunami drill.

Judging a Science Fair

2010-06-16T02:02:00.000-07:00

Seatoun school asked me to be a judge for their Science Fair. The quality of the investigations was great and it was hard to choose the winner! I am really looking forward to the Muritai School Science Fair this week and know it will be just as fantastic!

GeoNet in action at GNS Science

2010-06-16T01:14:00.000-07:00

The GeoNet programme improves the detection and understanding of geological hazards such as volcanos, earthquakes and landslides with live information collected by hazard monitoring equipment around the country. Information in various forms is freely available to everyone through its interactive website. For example, you can have emails sent to you each time there is an earthquake in NZ and you can email back a reply if you felt it. Scientists Kevin Fenaughty and Sara Page showed me around.

Cool Student resources from GNS Science Lower Hutt

2010-06-10T19:47:00.000-07:00

Julian Thomson, a teacher and researcher at GNS Science, showed me amazing resources he creates as part of his Educational Outreach programme. He has a passion for glaciers and an interest in earthquakes, fossils and rocks among other things!
Check out the GNS website for Julians's blog.

Visiting Earthquake Scientists at GNS Science

2010-06-06T02:09:00.000-07:00

Scientist Rob Langridge showed me an exciting research project he is working on!
Aerial photographs show scientists lots of information about fault lines but in New Zealand large areas of forest cover mean the contours of the land cannot be seen in many places.
He is using a laser scanner operated from a small plane to collect images that travel down to the land and bounce back up to the plane without showing the trees!

Visiting scientists at GNS Science Lower Hutt

2010-06-06T01:28:00.000-07:00

At Harcourt Park in Upper Hutt we could see the fault line as a clear line running vertically down the river bank. Look on the left side of the photo where the gravels change colour and texture in a straight line from just under the big beech tree to the water.

Earthquake scientist Frank Van Dissen took me to see evidence of the Wellington fault line along the banks of the Hutt River. Here you can see the fault exposed on the north west bank.
Crushed rock from the fault is washed into the river.

GNS Science in Lower Hutt

2010-06-05T04:18:00.000-07:00

This trench is across the earthquake faultline at Ohariu Valley near Johnsonville.
Photos courtesy of GNS Science

This week I have been talking to earthquake scientists at GNS Science.
Nicola Litchfield is an earthquake geologist who investigates large prehistoric earthquakes in the Wellington region. She is part of a team who have dug deep trenches across earthquake faults around Wellington. Through analysis of the exposed layers and carbon dating them the dates of previous quakes can be estimated.

More Fossils!

2010-05-31T16:00:00.000-07:00

We discovered our shells are from the pleistocene period, which covers the last million years. In fossil years they are quite young, even though we estimate them to be 60,000 to 100,000 years old!

This week I've been spending time preparing fossilised shells for identification and classification in the Sedimentology Lab. These chunks of siltstone, mixed with the shells came from a beach at Castlecliff near Whanganui. First we wash the chunks in a small round metal sieve. Then we identify them by comparing them with samples kept in the University collection, using reference books or using an online catalogue.

Wellington science teacher fellows visit Victoria University.

2010-05-24T19:27:00.000-07:00

In the Earth Science lab we looked at grains of pollen taken from core samples of sediment/soils drilled from within the earth under microscopes. We learned how scientists can tell by identifying the types of pollen which plants were growing on the Earth millions of years ago. This helps them understand the impact that climate change has had on planet earth.

We made some flubber, which is a mixture of PVA glue and borax(a chemical from the chemist). The PVA is a long chain polymer,which means its molecules can slide over each other and are 'runny'. When you add the borax it stops the molecules sliding and they stick together, making a kind of silly putty, called 'flubber'! It is great to play with and will even bounce!

Last Friday some primary science teachers visited us so we organised time in the chemistry and earth science labs.
In the chemistry lab we experimented with magnets, balance and optical illusions.

Wairarapa Field Trip

2010-05-17T01:56:00.000-07:00

Next stop was to the marine terraces high above Whangamoana Beach, near Lake Ferry. We had to walk very carefully along the edge of the cliff face as it was a long way down and we didn't want to slip! The tops of these terraces formed the sea floor millions of years ago and were down at sea level.

My most recent field trip was with GNS Science to the South Wairarapa. I tagged along with seismologists visiting from California. We walked up the riverbed of the Wharekauhau Stream to see the "Wharekauhau thrust",huge cliffs composed of thick layers of bedrock,silt containing ancient tree trunks and roots and marine gravels. You can see the layers quite clearly in the photos.

P waves and S waves

2010-05-06T16:00:00.000-07:00

Scientists and researchers can spend lots of time analysing data and I am helping with earthquake data at present. Information collected by seismometers measuring earthquake activity is accessed by computer and checked for accuracy in picking out two kinds of seismic waves - S and P waves.
During an earthquake the 2 sides of a faultline jerk past each other,releasing stored energy as seismic waves that travel out through the surrounding rock.
Seismic waves travel at different speeds - P waves are fast and reach the surface first,S waves are slower and cause the ground to shudder backwards and forwards.
It is important to record each of these separatetly - a slow job as there are thousands and thousands for each series of earthquakes!

Teaching Black Robins!

2010-04-29T16:10:00.000-07:00

Before we left I had the opportunity to hold a giant weta! It was very heavy, very cold and very tickly!

North Island Black Robins are clever birds. Their Maori name is Toutouwai.
A close up of their food stick.
The robins now always go straight to the hole with 2 worms in it. Michelle says they have learned to count to 2 as the holes are covered up and they can't see in! They move the cover with their beaks.
The robins watch while she puts 2 mealworms on a hole at one end of the branch and only 1 in the hole at the other end. She puts covers over the holes.
Michelle has taught the robins to come when they hear her call. She bangs 2 sticks together and they appear from the trees.

First Brian, our guide, showed us the predator proof fence that stops animals getting in or out.
Last Friday, Michelle, a RSNZ Primary Teacher Fellow hosted by Zealandia in Karori, invited the Wellington cluster group to visit and see her research project with North Island Black Robins.

Applied Geophysics Field Trip to Tongariro National Park

2010-04-25T16:01:00.000-07:00

Reading a gravity meter.

For any geophysical survey it is important to know exactly where you are on the surface of the earth. We use gravity surveying for this.
The hole!
This was a really big bang!
We pushed the explosives down the holes we had bored.
Firing was by remote control,linked to a laptop.
The explosives looked like a roll of salami and were powerful enough to blow up a car! We had to have an explosives expert with us and wear safety vests!
We drilled holes for the explosives!
These are geophones that "read" the waves from the impact of the hammer or an explosion as if there was an earthquake.
The seismic survey was very exciting!
We used a line of geophones as sensors and used explosives and a sledge hammer hitting a metal plate as a seismic source
The students on the field trip.
Mount Ruapehu has a number of earthquake faultlines close by.
During the school holidays I joined 16 students and 4 staff on a field trip to learn how to design and conduct geophysical surveys in order to find out more about 3 earthquake fault lines in the area around the southern side of Mt Ruapehu. As well as this I was "Camp Mother"- responsible for keeping everybody well fed and happy - a big job in itself as the nearest shop was a 20 km trip away and field work makes everyone very hungry! The goal was to "do" scientific research by collecting some simple data sets on faults and compare the following methods-resistivity,seismic,magnetic and gravity.

Field Work

2010-04-25T14:45:00.000-07:00

The round ball like object at the top of the solar panel is the GPS unit.
Keeping equipment dry is very important! We use lots of plastic boxes and bags!
Downloading data on a laptop. It looks like lots of numbers.
A reftek seismic recorder - these are put in heavy duty plastic bags or plastic boxes to keep them dry.
A palm pilot records the data about the position of each seismic station
I have spent time over the past few weeks checking and collecting data from seismometer stations around the Wellington area. Some are permanent and record data long term, while others are left in place for a particular length of time for a monitoring project and then shifted to other sites. Site information is read from a palm pilot linked to GPS and recorded so we know which site is which later. Seismic data is stored on cards like the sd card in a digital camera. Data is downloaded onto a laptop and new cards put in to collect new information. Most have a solar panel for power and back up batteries as well.

More Fossils!

2010-04-22T13:05:00.000-07:00

While on my fellowship I have become fascinated by fossils. On a recent field trip to the beach at Paekakariki we found evidence of an early cooking pit sandwiched between layers of sand in the eroded sand hills behind the beach. It is called a shell midden and contains discarded fossilised clam shells and carbonised wood (charcoal) from the cooking fires.
It is hundreds of years old and gives us information about what early inhabitants of this area ate and how they cooked their food.

A visit to NIWA: "Where water meets the sky"

2010-03-29T18:33:00.000-07:00

The paua try to cling onto your hand! They are this lovely blue colour because they have grown up in a tank and have not been out in sunlight. If you look carefully you will see little yellow tags to identify its genetic stock. Other paua had red, green, yellow or blue tags.(The tags don't hurt the paua)
At NIWA they are running a paua breeding programme to produce a strain of fast growing and healthy paua.
Ms Harrison with a king crab. Ms Harrison invited us to NIWA as she is working there as a science fellow. She used to teach at Muritai School and says "hello" to anyone who remembers her!

A giant sea spider!

This is an isopod - a bit like a giant underwater slater! It crawls along the sea floor in parts of the Atlantic Ocean.

Each month the Wellington Primary Science Teacher Fellows visit one of the science organisations where one of us is hosted. Last week we visited NIWA. NIWA's focus is the atmosphere and water(marine and freshwater)and the life within.

Fossils, fossils fossils!

2010-03-29T17:47:00.000-07:00

Marianna has just co-written and published 'The Kiwi Fossil Hunter's Handbook' which shows you how and where to find fossils around New Zealand. I will buy a copy for the Muritai School library.
Part of a New Zealand dinosaur! This one is a moasaur.
Here is a fossil of a prehistoric fish!

On a visit to GNS Science with my Wellington cluster group I was able to learn more about New Zealand fossils from John Simes, the collections manager and Marianna Terezow, a computer technician with a passion for paleontology. Paleontology is the study of fossils, which are usually the hard or bony parts of animals or plants that have been preserved in sand and mud (sediment) that has been turned into sedimentary rock over huge amounts of time (millions of years).

Learning about Rocks

2010-03-29T16:33:00.000-07:00

Some of the samples were fossilised. Can you tell what these ones are?

Last week I learned about rock types by comparing similarities and differences of lots of samples.

Maui fishes up New Zealand.

2010-03-21T17:19:00.000-07:00

Follow this legend to see what New Zealand might look like in 4 million years time!
I saw this storyboard while I was investigating the Wellington earthquake faultline.

Information via text message!

2010-03-21T15:35:00.000-07:00

The generator is enormous and takes up a small room!

Last week I visited the Hutt Valley Emergency Management office in Lower Hutt. They are responsible for co-ordinating responses to emergencies such as tsunami,earthquake, flood and fire hazards. Muritai and all other schools are linked to their ReadyNet emergency preparedness network. If there is an emergency such as a tsunami alert they send the school a text message! They have their own generator to provide power if it has been cut off.

Mrs Ryan as a Scientist

2010-03-15T20:19:00.000-07:00

Follow my activities while I am on my Primary Science Teacher Fellowship.

Kupe's Sail

2010-03-15T19:52:00.000-07:00

Maori legend says that the great navigator Kupe won an argument with his rival Ngake about who could make a sail in the fastest time. Kupe won and the triangular shaped rock tilted at 45degrees represents the sail. The rock is about 15 million years old and was originally the flat bed of the ocean floor before massive earth movement tilted it upwards!

2010-03-15T19:48:00.000-07:00

These fossil shells look very much like present day but are 6 million years old!

Hurupi Stream

2010-03-15T19:41:00.000-07:00

At Hurupi Stream we went on a fossil hunt and I found fossil shells 6 to 12 million years old in the mudstone about 20 metres from the road! They are easy to find when an expert shows you what to look for!

Lake Ferry

2010-03-15T19:35:00.000-07:00

The cliffs at Lake Ferry on the Wairarapa coast show layers of marine mudstone over 3 million years old! They contain fossils.

Wairarapa Rocks!

2010-03-15T19:10:00.000-07:00

I have just been on a field trip to some key sites in the Southern Wairarapa to get some hands-on experience of geology in the field. The rocks and landscape of of the area show its geological history spanning hundreds of millions of years. I have been learning how to "read the rocks".
In 1855 a huge earthquake with a magnitude of 8+ rocked the area and caused the ground to move 18 metres horizontally and 9 metres vertically at this spot. If you look carefully at the photo you can see the bed of a stream that was cut off from its source and now intersects with a high bank.

2010-03-15T02:28:00.000-07:00

While we were in Dunedin some of us ran up the steepest street!

Becoming a Leader

2010-03-15T02:11:00.000-07:00

I have just arrived back from Otago University where I joined 20 other Royal Society of New Zealand Fellows to complete a Leadership paper. When we return to our schools we will develop exciting science programmes!

SAKHE transect line

2010-03-15T01:54:00.000-07:00

This google earth map shows the positions on a line across the southern Wairarapa where we have placed seismometers.

Lectures begin!

2010-03-15T01:20:00.000-07:00

Weeks 3 & 4
It has been an interesting 2 weeks for me... last week all the university students (and I) experienced 'Orientation Week'- a fascinating range of 'celebratory activities' on campus. Lots of support for new students, library tours etc as well! This week lectures are in full swing & I am sitting in a paper called ESCI 111, - an introduction to Earth Sciences. There were 240 of us at the first lecture! Laboratory work will be undertaken in 11 smaller groups thank goodness! The cool thing about this paper is that 13 lecturers, all experts in their field, facilitate it. Every week will be a new topic - fossils, rock types, plate tectonics, earthquakes, volcanoes, weather patterns, climate change, coastal processes etc. Khandu Patel, another RSNZ Science teacher fellow is considering taking it too - it would be great to have a "study buddy' to discuss new learning with so I've got my fingers crossed!

Last Tuesday I was lucky enough to be invited by GNS Science to join a symposium of 10 international researchers who were meeting to share current research papers that they are working on in the field of earthquake activity. Each did a 15-minute presentation then invited feedback. There was lots of questioning/validating/supporting and collaboration and the discussion related so well to the Inquiry process that we follow at Muritai School.

Seismic waves under the sea!

2010-03-15T00:57:00.000-07:00

I was lucky enough to be invited to join a 3 week voyage on Roger Revelle, an American scientific research ship visiting New Zealand to haul up seismometers that had been recording seismic activity on the sea floor around the southern end of the South Island. Unfortunately I was unable to make the trip but managed to tour the ship on its return. The seismometers have a bright yellow casing and bob to the surface flying a flag for easy spotting!

My First 2 Weeks in the Geophysics Department at Victoria University!

2010-03-14T20:29:00.000-07:00

My experiences so far... AMAZING!

My 2 hosts Dr John Townend and Professor Martha Savage are just fantastic and always have their doors open if I need to ask questions!
My days at present are mainly either fieldwork on the Wairarapa coast or quiet days in the office writing up the fieldwork notes!
The current project I am working on is called the Seismic Array HiKurangi Experiment.
This is a project to provide detailed images of the earth under the Wellington - Wairarapa region by collecting data from seismometers buried in the ground. I am helping to install and collect readings from a transect (straight) line of 50 seismometers stretching from Glendhu Rocks on the west coast out from Martinborough to Paekakariki on the east coast.

On fieldwork days 2 or 3 of us collect & check equipment needed from a store at Seaview and take the 4-wheel drive out to Martinborough. From there we 'scout' for suitable places to install seismometers. We have criteria to consider - land formation, soil type (look for bedrock), north facing to power the solar panels, far enough away from vandals, distance from each other etc etc. We take GPS co-ordinates & data is collected.
We usually install 1 seismometer per trip - dig down to bedrock - Mark the technician does most of that- mix up a concrete base for the seismometer, level it, make a protective shell, & bury it. We install a solar panel for power, install back up batteries and build an electric fence around it - I am getting really good at this! Then off to scout for more suitable sites using GPS - getting good at this too! We make contact with local farmers, explain our objectives & need their permission for using their land.
Some days we start at 8.30am & return at 9-10.30pm via a meal at the Martinborough Hotel
I have been sunburned, drenched in the rain, warmed by the sun, entranced by the amazing views, zapped by an electric fence (Just a little one - you only do it once), climbed dozens of steep slopes & loved every minute of it - (well maybe not the fence)
On office days we record all the GPS data on spreadsheets, check & enter co-ordinates, & write a field report for Professor Savage. Today I did this on my own - A week ago it was a daunting task!

What I have learned over the past 2 weeks:
Fieldwork:
Preparation is so important - check & recheck that all the gear is charged & working properly nothing is left to chance.
Health & safety nothing is left to chance here either!
Criteria for installing seismometers must be adhered to - near enough is not good enough
Data there is an amazing amount of data to be analyzed for every field day. So many files to download!
Take lots of duct tape & cable ties it’s amazing what you can mend!!

Mrs Ryan as a Scientist

2010-03-09T20:54:00.000-08:00

I have had so many experiences since starting my Primary Science Teacher Fellowship!
I am based at the Geophysics Department at Victoria University and am investigating seismic (earthquake ) activity in the North Island.