Internet Lesson Designer

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Is Nike the Goddess of Ocean Currents?
Richard H. Audet, Ed.D. Middle Tennessee State
Univ. raudet_at_mtsu.edu
Student Materials
Teacher Materials
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Student Materials

• Stage of the Learning Cycle Exploration
• The Crucial Event
• Engage
• Explore
• Explain
• Apply
• Assess
• STEM Connection

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The Crucial Event
In 1990, Curtis Ebbesmeyer, an oceanographer,
whose favorite pastime is beachcombing, learned
that hundreds of brand new Nike sneakers were
washing ashore along the Pacific coast. Over the
years, hes found a lot of interesting stuff on
beaches like hockey gloves and rubber duckies,
but never anything like this. Because every
sneaker carried a unique serial number, he traced
back the great Nike spill to a Korean cargo
ship, the Hansa Carrier. During a violent North
Pacific storm, several containers filled with
sneakers were swept overboard. Lets see what
else he discovered.
Student Materials
Explore
Explain
Assess
Analyze
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The Amazing Google Earth

• What do you know about Google Earth? Your
  teacher will demonstrate some amazing things you
  can investigate with this program.
• Search for the White House, Washington, DC. Its
  at (latitude) 38N (longitude) 77W.
• Check out the neat pictures of the Presidents
  home that people posted.
• What are some adjectives youd use to describe
  Google Earth?

Student Materials
Explore
Explain
Assess
Analyze
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Question  What do 80,000 Nike sneakers, 29,000
rubber duckies, and 5 million Lego pieces have in
common?Click here for Reading

• Tips
• Oceanographers are scientists who study the
  ocean.
• Every place on the surface of the earth can be
  described according to its specific longitude and
  latitude.
• Google Earth enables you to identify the exact
  location of almost every place by its longitude
  and latitude.

Father of Oceanography Matthew Fontaine Maury
Student Materials
Engage
Explain
Assess
Analyze
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Nike Sightings

• Carefully examine the Beachcomber Data table.
  What information does is contain and what data
  will you be expected to enter?
• Your teacher will demonstrate how to identify
  locations where sneakers were found and answer
  questions about the chart.
• Use Google Earth and the longitude and latitude
  data and to locate 11 points where sneakers
  washed ashore.
• Zoom in to find names for places where the
  sneakers were found. Enter this information in
  the data table.
• What is the distance between each of the 2
  consecutive sneaker locations? Add this
  information to the data table.
• Save an Image of your work.

Beachcomber Data
Student Materials
Engage
Explore
Analyze
Assess
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Beachcomber Data
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Interpret the Data

• What five statements can you make to describe
  what happened during and after the sneaker spill?
• Do you think all of the sneakers found in any
  one place traveled the same path? Explain.
• What was long the total distance traveled by the
  sneakers found at Location 11?
• What are some possible explanations for how the
  sneakers arrived at Locations 10 and 11?
• Look at a map of currents in the North Pacific
  Ocean. Are there any that flow along similar
  paths as the sneakers?
• What currents might have transported the
  sneakers?
• What other forces help keep ocean water in
  constant motion?

Student Materials
Engage
Explore
Explain
Assess
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Facts, Questions, Responses
Student Materials
Engage
Explore
Explain
STEM
Analyze
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STEM Connection
What are some of the old and new technologies
that have been used to provide oceanographers
with information about the oceans currents?
Visit the Ocean Motion, CIMAS, and Data Buoy
websites. to investigate how water in the worlds
oceans circulates.
Student Materials
Cover Page
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Teacher Materials Standards

• TN Science Standards
• Earth And Space Science GLE 0607.8.3 Investigate
  the relationship between currents and oceanic
  temperature differences.
• Embedded Inquiry
• GLE 0607.Inq.2 Use appropriate tools and
  techniques to gather, organize, analyze, and
  interpret data.
• GLE 0607.Inq.3 Synthesize information to
  determine cause and effect relationships between
  evidence and explanations.
• Embedded Technology and Engineering
• GLE 0607.T/E.1 Explore how technology responds to
  social, political, and economic needs.
• TN Mathematics Standards
• GLE 0606.1.7 Recognize the historical development
  of mathematics, mathematics in context, and the
  connections between mathematics and the real
  world.
• 0606.1.7 Formulate questions, design studies, and
  collect real world data.
• SPI 0606.1.1 Make conjectures and predictions
  based on data.
• SPI 0706.5.1 Interpret and employ various graphs
  and charts to represent data.
• 0806.1.4 Relate data concepts to relevant
  concepts in the earth and space, life, and
  physical sciences

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Teacher Materials Standards

• Geography Integration
• STANDARD 1 How to use maps and other geographic
  representations, tools, and technologies to
  acquire, process, and report information
  indicates that by the end of the eighth grade,
  the student knows and understands The
  characteristics, functions, and applications of
  maps, globes, aerial and other photographs,
  satellite-produced images, and models.

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Teacher Materials Implementation Tips

• In this activity, students use beachcomber data
  and Google Earth to trace the path traveled by
  sneakers that were swept overboard from a
  container ship in the North Pacific Ocean.
  Latitude and longitude are plotted to show the
  path traveled by the floating sneakers. The
  Google Earth Image is associated with the
  currents of the North Pacific.
• Note this activity could be completed as a
  teacher-directed demonstration with a computer
  projector. If students complete this activity in
  teams of two, they may be able to email you a
  copy of their final maps.

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Teacher Materials Google Earth Instructions

• Open Google Earth
• To begin the search, copy each latitude and
  longitude from the data table into the Fly To
  box.
• When Google Earth identifies a location where
  sneakers were found, activate the Placemark
  pushpin in the toolbar above the image. When the
  Placemark dialog box opens, give this location a
  name, e.g., Sneaker 3.
• Repeat this for all eleven locations.
• Measure distance
• Under the Tools menu, click on the ruler/line
  tool to find the distance between 2 consecutive
  locations (e.g., the distance between location 1
  and location 2 is 1183 miles).
• Measure and plot total distance
• Under the Tools menus, click on the ruler/path
  tool to mark the path and to find this distance.
• In the Tools menu, the Play Tour feature can be
  used to visualize the ocean path taken by the
  farthest traveler.

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Beachcomber Reading

• They have all been spilled in the ocean in
  maritime accidents during the past few years and
  have turned up on beaches thousands of miles from
  where they were lost.  And that's not all that
  the tides bring in  computer monitors, toilet
  seats, bales of marijuana, surfboards,
  lightbulbs, and toxic-waste containers are among
  the other items that a committed beachcomber
  might find.  Curtis Ebbesmeyer is such a
  beachcomber.  He is also a researcher who studies
  long-distance floatables in order to understand
  ocean currents.  Ebbesmeyer, who lives on the
  Oregon coast, had been studying ocean currents
  for a number of years when, in May 1991, he
  learned that hundreds of brand-new (though
  somewhat soggy) Nike sneakers were washing up on
  beaches in his area.  In fact, they were arriving
  in such quantities that beachcombers had begun to
  hold swap meets to match left and right shoes of
  the same size.
• Unlike most of the beachcombers, who were mainly
  interested in finding shoes they could wear or
  sell, Ebbesmeyer figured that if he could find
  out where the sneakers originated and where they
  turned up, he could use them as data for studying
  ocean currents.  In fact, he soon learned that
  the sneakers had been on a container ship en
  route from Korea when the ship encountered a
  major storm on May 27, 1990.  Twenty-one
  containers were washed overboard, including five
  that contained 80,000 Nikes.  The sneakers were
  even marked with serial numbers for convenient
  identification!  With the help of volunteer
  beachcombers in many countries, Ebbesmeyer and
  his colleagues managed to recover about 2.6
  percent of the floating sneakers, mainly in North
  America, on beaches from Northern California to
  the Queen Charlotte Islands in Canada.  A few
  have turned up in Hawaii, while others have been
  found on Wake Island, the Philippines and Japan. 
  Some apparently circumnavigated the North Pacific
  and wound up back on the coasts of Washington and
  Oregon in 1996 and 1997.
• Tracking the paths of these sneakers and other
  floating junk (much of it plastic) that washes up
  on beaches around the world has helped to develop
  and refine models of ocean circulation and
  provided an inexpensive and valuable adjunct to
  the drift experiments that oceanographers conduct
  with modern, high-tech (and much more expensive)
  tracking devices.

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Nike Currents
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Resources Credits
Curriculum Resources http//beachcombersalert.org
/ http//www.alteich.com/tidbits/t072301.htm http
//www.dlese.org/library/catalog_DLESE-000-000-007-
233.htm http//studyofplace.terc.edu/Activities/Ac
tivity.cfm?ActivityId9ActivityItemId63 http//o
ceanmotion.org/ http//www.ndbc.noaa.gov/ http//o
ceancurrents.rsmas.miami.edu/ Images http//snea
kerfiles.com/wpcontent/uploads/2006/11/nike_air.jp
g http//www.paulsboro.k12.nj.us/hslib/greekwebque
st_files/image004.jpg http//www.kidsgeo.com/image
s/ocean-current.jpg http//www.navmetoccom.navy.mi
l/educate/neptune/images/ltmaury.gif http//www.wo
rth1000.com/entries/192000/192329taCX_w.jpg http/
/beatl.barnard.columbia.edu/maritime/MaritimeNatio
n/Geography/Maps/Maps19thC/Maury_Bathy1862l.jpg ht
tp//theoystersgarter.files.wordpress.com/2008/01/
north-pacific-circulation.jpg
Cover Page
Teacher Materials