Education
Class@poles
(school year 2005/6)
Class@Poles is an educational contest within
the Belgian network of polar research BE-POLES. This competition,
organized by the Renard
Centre of Marine Geology ran over the school year 2005-2006.
It paved the way to polar research, ‘accessible’ to
school classes with an entrepreneurial spirit. Classes from
the second level of secondary education were invited to (1)
formulate a question dealing with a topic from a wide spectrum
of polar research, and (2) design a project and expedition(s)
to seek the answer.
Five classes
contributed creative projects.
Project 1, The ‘Collège
Cardinal Mercier’ in
Braine-L’Alleud designed a thermal drilling machine,
intended to penetrate vertically while dissolving the ice of
the satellite Europa around Jupiter. A prototype could be constructed
for testing at the Poles.
Project 2, entitled ‘Albedo’,
from the same school, set up an experiment to test the impact
of soot pollution on the melting of snow.
Project 3, submitted by the ‘Collège
de Bellevue’ in Dinant, focused on the Southern Ocean
food chain. Special attention was paid to the very small organisms
that serve as food for larger animals.
Project 4, ‘expedition Spitsberg’ was
geographically focused. A class from the ‘Koninklijke
Atheneum Wetteren’ wondered whether the needle of a compass
is always directed to the north.
Project 5, was concerned about the health of
the Inuit, endangered by the industrialised lifestyle of southern
country people. The ‘Koninklijk Atheneum Voskenslaan’ in
Gent wanted to study PCBs, metaloxides and pesticides in tissues
of animals and human beings.
Each class and project delegated
a junior researcher to take their question to the field during
an expedition to the North in the Easter school holidays,
31 March to 16 April 2006. A logbook was
created to follow their adventures.
Complementary resources:
- Dedicated
website in French and Dutch:
- Dutch
flyer of the class@poles contest (pdf: 2.5MB)
- French flyer
of the class@poles contest (pdf: 2.5
MB)
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