Inspiring the future generation of Oceanographers
Last week, as part of Smart Waikato's Secondary School Employer Partnerships (SSEP), MetOcean Solutions developed a 3-day program for the Year 10 math students from Raglan Area School.
The students were introduced to our work at MetOcean Solutions on the first day. Our team showed how math is a fundamental part of what we do and discussed real-life applications, illustrating the importance of our products and services. The students got to plot their own sea surface temperature contour maps. As such, we introduced mapping concepts, units and conversion.
On the second day, we took students to the field. We developed an activity for them to visualize and estimate current velocity using oranges as markers in Whāingaroa Harbour. Besides a better understanding of their natural surroundings, it assists the students to start connecting their experiences to what they learn in the classroom.
By observing the orange moving with the tide, they could see the eddies created as the tide pushed in the harbour, and they would time how long it took the oranges to pass a predetermined point. We deployed the oranges at different stages of the tidal cycle to observe how the current changes.
We also deployed the Moana Project's Mangōpare sensor as part of the field activity. This sensor is an instrument used by fishers to gather temperature data which we use to model sea temperature (Check out Moana's marine heatwave forecasts), and climate change. The students deployed the instrument from three different locations and measured the temperature profile of the water column.
On the program's final day, we used the data collected in the field by the students to calculate current speed and velocity. The students plotted the current velocities at different locations of the channel by the one-way bridge at different times of the tidal cycle.
The partnership with Raglan Area School was a great opportunity to expose our local students to what we do at MetOcean Solutions, showing how exciting and rewarding a career in oceanography can be.
Thank you to the Raglan Area School class of oceanographers for helping us discover the estuary current speed during mid-incoming tide!
Sketch of the students’ field observations: oranges paths (top) and current velocity representation (bottom). Current velocity is a vector (arrow) that represents the current speed and direction. The arrow length represents its speed (longer is faster) and direction refers to the flow direction, overall direction of the orange path.
MetOcean Solutions is part of Smart Waikato's Secondary School Employer Partnerships, an award-winning initiative raising student aspirations, resulting in higher achievement, retention and better transitions. Read more about it at https://smartwaikato.co.nz/ssep/