Piscataway Teacher to Explore the Earth's Core
Filed under: Deep Earth Academy, School of Rock, Understanding
From MyCentralJersey.com
By Jeff Grant
PISCATAWAY — How often does someone get to see the world, while doing something he loves, and not have to pay for it?
At 26, Ed Cohen, an earth-sciences teacher at the township's Quibbletown Middle School, will be doing all that while collecting material for lessons to his pupils.
Cohen is one of 14 teachers from around the globe participating beginning next week in a Pacific Ocean research voyage aboard a ship operated by a Washington, D.C.-based organization that represents some of the nation's leading public and private ocean-research and education institutions. The School of Rock 2009 workshop, a program of the Consortium for Ocean Leadership, will take the teachers to an area above the Juan de Fuca plate, one of the earth's more active tectonic plates. Located off the coast of Washington and Oregon, the plate is in a region that is among the world's most active in terms of earthquake and volcanic activity.
Cohen will be part of a team aboard the JOIDES Resolution that will have daily opportunities to analyze sediment and rocks. The team's efforts are intended to help them learn more about how these materials affect the earth's atmosphere.
"It'll be a nice geological time scale from core samples that you can't get anywhere else in the world," Cohen said.
There is much to learn about the area, according to Cohen.
"It's estimated that we know only about 3 percent of what there is to learn about the oceans. It's pretty much the next frontier," the educator said.
Cohen said the data gathered by the team can be used to help researchers and educators learn more about global warming, earthquakes and weather patterns.
"I am looking forward to sharing what I learn with my students," he said, adding that the information will be used to develop future activities for his classes at Quibbletown, where Cohen has taught eighth-grade earth science for four years.
But his pupils don't need to wait until Cohen returns to begin mining his learning experiences of the deep. News and impressions about the trip will be available on Facebook and Twitter. For information online, including all available links, log on to joidesresolution.org, or check out Tweets on Twitter at: twitter.com/TheJR.
