Challenge Question 1:
The winners are:
Bern Home School
Karpf Home School
One of the first responses we received deserves honorable mention
because the detailed explanation of how they calculated answer 2!
There was only one "small" flaw: they reversed their meters
and feet in Question #1. NASA itself has made that mistake as you
probably know -- and we lost a space vehicle as a result. This is
a good time to learn how costly a mistake can be.
Challenge Question #1
1. What is the highest point of the Tahitian Islands (mountain & elevation)?
2. On a clear day, how far out at sea in a Polynesian canoe can you
see the island of Bora Bora, Tahiti based on its highest elevation?
Acceptable Answers to 1 = Mont Orohena @ 2241 meters (7352 feet)
Acceptable answers to 2 = Using the formula on page 12 of the Educator
Guide (the Polynesian Voyaging Society formula for seeing objects at
sea), and considering the height of Mount Otemanu (727 m, 2385 ft.)
and the canoe mast height of 25 feet, you should have gotten about 54
nautical miles. If you had trouble with this one, give it a try again
using Mont Orohena! It's good practice for your voyage to Easter Island!
Challenge Question 2:
The winners are: Archway 5th Graders
St. Joseph School
What are the doldrums, and how can they affect an ocean voyage?
The Doldrums is an area of the Atlantic Ocean and the Pacific
Ocean, usually located between 5° north and 5° south of the equator,
affected by the Intertropical Convergence Zone (ITCZ), a low-pressure
area around the equator where the prevailing winds are calm. This environment
can lead to light or variable winds and more severe weather, in the form
of heavy squalls, thunderstorms and hurricanes. Sailors noticed the stillness
of the rising (and not blowing) air near the equator and gave the region
the depressing name "doldrums."
Because of the unpredictable weather patterns, the Doldrums became notorious
with sailors because this region's periods of deadly calm could trap
ships for days or weeks on end as they waited for enough wind to power
Challenge Question 3:
The winners are:
Rebecca Currier (Orleans Elementary School, VT)
Chung (Kamehameha Elementary School, HI)
We got a lot of great answers!
Honorable mention to:
Nikkolas Stroughter , Holly Bern & Esther
Karpf (All three different Home Schools in CA)
In The Complete Sailor: Learning the Art of Sailing, David
Seidman writes, “Clouds are the harbingers of weather. Their shape,
height, color, and sequence foretell coming events.”
How can the shape, height, and color of clouds help an ocean navigator
to predict oncoming weather?
"High clouds are associated with the upper atmosphere and distant
weather systems up to six hours away. If they are wispy and white, the weather
will be fine. Lower clouds relate to the current weather or that which is soon
to come. If they are dense and dark, change is imminent, usually for the worse.
Notice if clouds are lowering or lifting, and if they are gathering or dispersing.
Lowering or gathering usually brings wet weather. Lifting or dispersing means
the weather will improve. A cloud's color seems obvious: the darker, the more
dangerous. And a sharp-edged dark cloud is the most dangerous of all. In shape,
flat clouds are characteristic of stable air, while lumpy, well-rounded clouds
live in unstable air."
"If the rain cloud is black, the wind isn't strong. If the cloud is brown,
the wind is probably strong. If the cloud is high, there's not much wind, but
maybe a lot of rain. If it's low, probably lots of wind.”
High Clouds – generally indicate fair or passing weather
Middle Clouds – good indication of a new storm development at sea with
poor visibility, large waves, and heavy swell
Low Clouds – usually indicate rain and wind raging from a steady drizzle
to a severe thunderstorm
Challenge Question 4:
The winners are:
Holly Bern Homeschool (Oakland, CA)
St. Josephs School (Garden City, NY)
The most potent danger faced by the modern-day voyager are high winds and
seas, which could cause... flooding, capsizing, breaking apart, and crew members
being washed overboard.
In mid-May, you and your crew began a voyage from Hawai’i
to Rapa Nui. Seven days into your journey, your canoe’s rudder became
damaged and you had to spend two days making repairs at sea. This unforeseen
delay has placed you in the path of an oncoming storm containing high winds and
waves. It is midday when you first observe the storm in the distance. You
are too far from land to take safe harbor, so you will have to weather the
storm for hours which will arrive around nightfall and persist until the following
Questions (please respond to both)
1. How will your crew prepare themselves and the canoe for the oncoming storm? (Hint:
Think about strong winds and storm surge and how these can be a danger to a
sailing vessel and crew.)
2. Once the storm passes and the weather clears, how will you determine your
location at sea and get back on course to Rapa Nui? (Hint: For the past
few weeks, you have been learning about many methods of navigating at sea. Which
of these methods would be most useful following a 24-hour period of disorienting
winds, waves, and dark skies?)
Part 1: We were looking for any or all of:
- Take down sails.
- Stow or secure
(tie down food equipment)
- No equipment on deck unless essential
- Eat a nutriceous
meal - higher in carbs for energy
- Have safety briefing with crew (where
med kit is, easy food, raingear, life preservers)
- Check flashlights, know
where there are batteries.
- Secure masts and hulls in preplanned fashion per
- throw unessentials overboard
Part 2: We were looking for: What we have learned thus far:
- Sun, moon and
stars at night
- Land debris (floatstam) in water
- Flight of birds.
- You knew
which general way the storm was blowing, and storm surge was coming from.
Estimate where we were when storm started and direction of storm and number
of hour for "what
if" estimates of location
Challenge Question #5:
Over the past several
weeks, you have learned about and observed many aspects of the movement of
stars across the night sky and their relationship to a sailor’s
latitude and longitude at sea. The ancient Polynesians memorized the
locations and patterns of important wayfaring stars; however, today we have
modern tools to help us easily access this information. (In fact,
part II of this Challenge “Charting a Course Through Space,” will
introduce you to some of the instruments and modern technologies that are
used in space navigation.) As a class, use some web-based resources
to help you answer the following question:
If you were navigating a Polynesian canoe in the ocean waters near French Polynesia
during the late spring, which stars would be most useful to you one hour
after sunset and one hour before sunrise? Use the table below as a
tool for helping you find your answer.
||Week: May 10–16, 2009
|Time of sunrise: 5:55a
||Time of sunset: 1734 (5:34p)
(between 4:55a and 5:55a)
generally moving from east to west
- (Big) Dipper) NE horizon
- Denebola and Regulus (Leo) NE
- Spica (Virgo) Eastern horizon
- Castor and Pollux (Gemini) North
- Capella (Auriga) NW
- Betelgeuse and Rigel (Orion) West
- Procyon (Canis Minor) overhead
- Sirius (Canis Major) overhead
- Acrux (Southern Cross) SE horizon
- Canopus (Carina) South
(between 5:34p and 6:34p)
generally moving from east to west
- Enif (Pegasus) NE
- Deneb (Cygnus) N
- Vega (Lyra) NW
- Altair (Aquila) NW
- Antares and Shaula (Scorpius) SW
- Used US Naval Observatory web site to determine
sunrise and sunset times.
- Used Time Zone map to determine time compared
- Used Heavens Above web site to view star charts for May
10 and May 16 between the hours of 4:55a – 5:55a and 5:34p – 6:34p.
Wikipedia to identify navigational stars and their position in
the constellations shown on the Heavens Above star charts.
Discussion of Question 5
As mentioned by our own NASA Quest Hawaiian Captain and Navigator Kälepa
Baybayan during the December 9 webcast, celestial navigation requires a number
of bright, dependable stars and planets (as well as our own star, the Sun)
to keep an ocean vessel on course.
For Question 5, the steps we recommend to help answer this last Challenge
question are as follows:
Use Wikipedia to identify navigational stars and their
position in the constellations shown on the Heavens Above star charts.
We used the list of 50
Bright Stars from : http://www.cosmobrain.com/cosmobrain/res/brightstar.html
Celestial navigation is a science but it features a bit of art and individual
taste. Based on a collection of considerations, sun location, constellation
location in horizon (N or S vs. center), and star brightness/color, here is
what we found in our investigation of possible answers for Question 5:
Since sun will be rising in East, we favor bright objects in the western sky:
Deneb in Cygnus
Vega in Lyra
Antares in Scorpius
Peacock in Pavo
Altair in Aquila (although perhaps too close to our zenith)
Planets Mars, Venus and Jupiter – for a period of time
Suggested by our NASA Quest students, the constellations Lupus, Libra, Corona
Since the sun will be setting in the West, we favor bright object in the eastern
Dubhe in Ursa Major
Arcturus in Bootes
Spica in Virgo
Alphard in Hydra (although perhaps too close to our zenith)
Canopus in Carina
Sirius in Canis Major
Pollux in Gemini
The Planet Saturn – for a period of time
Suggested by our NASA Quest students, the constellations Crux (the Southern