c.o.o.l. classroom

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• Learn more about biology, ecology, environmental science, oceanography, physics, and technology.

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The COOL Classroom, a collaboration between Rutgers Marine and Coastal Sciences and the Jacques Cousteau National Estuarine Research reserve, is designed to capitalize on middle and high students’ natural fascination with the marine environment to improve basic skills training, problem solving, and critical thinking skills.In the online COOL Classroom, you will findbiology, physics, and earth sciences projects. Each project is accompanied by a teacher’s guide and an example of a student project.

• Biology Project: Gone Fishing. Explore the role of phytoplankton in a marine food web and how physical factors in the environment affect living communities.
• Physics: Follow that Bloom. Use vectors to graphically calculate sea surface currents. Using real-time oceanographic data, predict the eventual location of a plankton bloom adrift at sea.
• Physics: Adrift. Graphically add vectors to determine the displacement of a boat adrift at sea. Real-time data for sea surface currents is used to determine the drift rate of a ship in the ocean and predict its eventual location.
• Earth Science: Create an Ocean Weather ForecastStudents predict a “bad” beach day or a “good” fishing day along the New Jersey coast by analyzing real-time meteorological data and satellite maps.

Additional lessons will help students learn about data collection and the difference between discrete (snapshots), continuous, and real-time data; the history of the exploration and study of the ocean; how and why oceanographers collect data; the instrumentation used to collect data; and careers in oceanography.Other topics in the COOL Facts area explore the human relationship with the ocean, why the ocean is salty, how the ocean moves, and more.