Six Flags Marine World - Cont'd

An ecosystem’s health depends on a delicate balance among the land, air, water, and its inhabitants. With PASCO’s Xplorer datalogger and biological and environmental sensors, students learned about the factors that are critical to support plant, animal and marine life in an ecosystem. Our hands-on field exploration experiments allowed students to examine the properties of salt water and fresh water, compare water samples from locations around the park, investigate photosynthesis, measure the salinity of soil, and monitor weather conditions at the park.

Salt vs. Freshwater
In this experiment, students used PASCO’s pH and Conductivity Sensors to measure the acidity and salinity of water from Dolphin Harbor (salt water) and from Flamingo Lake (fresh).

Water Temperature vs. Depth
In Pacific Stadium’s deep pool, students investigated the difference between water temperature at the surface and the temperature 25 feet deeper. Students discussed an Ocean Temperature Profile chart (at right) and the characteristics of various ocean layers, comparing the environment of the marine pool to conditions for marine mammals in the wild.

Weather Watch
At a PASCO "Weather Watch" station, temperature, relative humidity, and atmospheric pressure were monitored over a 6-hour period. PASCO’s Humidity/Temp/Dew Point Sensor and Barometer Sensor were configured to take measurements once every 10 minutes. In addition to seeing the temperature increase throughout the day, students could observe the barometer dropping as a low-pressure system approached Northern California. See a Weather Watch graph.

Tropical vs. Desert Terrarium
In this experiment, Six Flags provided two aquariums in their indoor classroom. One included tropical plants, skinks and salamanders, and a small pool of water. The arid "desert" terrarium featured sand, branches and a tarantula. Teachers and students could measure and compare the differences in Humidity and Temperature between the two environments, viewing the results in a DataStudio graph.

Turbidity of Water Samples
Using PASCO’s new Turbidity Sensor, visitors were able to measure and compare the cloudiness of water samples from various locations throughout the park. Students were very surprised to discover how clear the water was from the Dolphin Harbor and Shark Experience tanks.

Salt Water Differences
By measuring the pH level of the Shark Experience and Sea Lion tanks, students were surprised to see a difference: chlorinating the Sea Lion tank resulted in a lower pH.

Below are several experiments (Microsoft Word format) that we performed during the three events.

E-mail to request any of the Marine World / DataStudio workbook files for the experiments listed above.
(Note: Workbooks can be viewed and used with DataStudio Lite.)