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Days Two and Three of our Voyage of Discovery were dedicated to collecting the data the students would need to test their hypotheses. The salinity team collected data while the Half Moon was underway from Gravesend Bay to the Tappan Zee Bridge, while the other teams took advantage of our layover off Piermont Marsh.
During the data collection phase, each student established a work schedule for gathering data, collected and analyzed samples, and recorded their findings.
Presentation Project Topics |
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Research Team 1: Celestial Tracking
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Students: Alyssa, Harmen, Kortnee, & Lauren
Senior Crew Advisor: Menno de Leeuw
Guiding Question: Where is the Half Moon?
Materials: Quadrant, directional compass, watch.
Procedure: Starting early in the morning while the ship remained stationary off Piermont Marsh, the celestial team used their instruments to track the course of the sun as it reached its zenith (highest point). At each reading, Kortnee aimed the quadrant at the sun (using its shadow to align her instrument rather than staring down its length directly at the sun). This determined the sun's elevation in degrees. At the same moment, Hansen used the directional compass to determine the sun's bearing, or azimuth. Alyssa and Lauren alternated between taking the quadrant reading or acting as official timekeeper.
When the team determined that the sun had reached its highest point, or zenith, they recorded the time as local true noon. From the sun's altitude at that moment, they were then able to calculate the Half Moon's latitude.
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Research Team 2: Mechanical Advantage |
Students: Dakota, Gabrielle, Marije, & Rianne
Senior Crew Advisors: Doug Lyke & Kipp Van Aken
Guiding Question: What is the mechanical advantage of different pulley setups?
Materials: Block & tackle simple machine, canvas bucket, bottle of water, tape measure, adhesive tape.
Procedure: While the ship remained at anchor off Piermont Marsh, the mechanical advantage team of Dakota, Gabrielle, Marije, and Rianne constructed a block-and-tackle simple machine in several configurations, using from one to five pulleys. They filled a bottle with water and placed it in a canvas bucket to fasten it to their rig, then marked the bottle so they could note when it had risen off the deck exactly two feet. The fixed weight and distance formed the constants in the experiment. With each pulley configuration, the students then lifted the weight and marked the line, measuring how much line had been pulled through the simple machine under each configuration in order to produce the constant.
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Research Team 3: Salinity |
   
Students: Brian, Emily, Jeanine, & Wouter
Senior Crew Advisor: Scott Beiter
Guiding Question: At what latitude will we reach fresh water?
Materials: Canvas bucket, sample jars, GPS unit, refractometer.
Procedure: With the help of their peers, the salinity team of Brian, Emily, Jeanine, and Wouter collected water samples from the Hudson River (using a canvas bucket) while the Half Moon traveled upriver from Gravesend Bay to the Tappan Zee Bridge on Day Two. Each sample was immediately stored in a sample jar and labeled with the time and latitude. On Day Three, while the ship lay at anchor, the team used a refractometer to measure the salinity gradient present in each sample, using that data to extrapolate the latitude where they expected the river's salinity count to drop to nothing (0 ppt, or completely fresh water).
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