Today in our 8:00 am science honors class, we learned about the thermohaline (thermo:temperature and haline:salt content) circulation that occurs in the Earth's oceans. We were given the task to create 'the Atlantic Ocean' in a small plastic container. To create the thermohaline circulation in the Atlantic Ocean (which is due to density differences in different parts of the ocean), we needed the dense water from the pole to sink and flow towards the equator, the water at the equator to stay on the surface and flow towards the pole, and intermediate water to stay in the middle.
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| Courtesy Wikipedia |
The materials that we had to work with included: water, hot plates, dye, salt, ice/snow, and cardboard. We were given 45 minutes to create our mini ocean masterpieces.
First, we created three solutions of water: cold salty polar water (blue), hot equator water (red), and temperate water (yellow). We filled one side of our container with snow to represent the glaciers at the pole, and one side of the container was placed next to a hot plate to simulate the warming at the equator. Finally, we filled the container with the temperate water, added the hot water at the 'equator', added the cold salty water at the 'pole', and watched the circulation occur!
--Olivia and Michael
--Olivia and Michael
Take a look at our video:
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