Pueblo area teachers and students in grades five through eight will spend the day learning about ozone and Antarctica in hands-on workshops for the next Science Explorers Program on Thursday, April 20.
Three workshops will be presented by the University of Colorado at Boulder's Science Discovery program from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. The workshops will be at the Colorado state fairgrounds.
Teams of one teacher and five students will work to solve problems dealing with tropospheric ozone pollution, stratospheric ozone destruction and the harsh climate of Antarctica.
In the workshop on ground level, or tropospheric ozone, the teams will learn how to gauge daily ozone levels and investigate how temperature inversions keep pollution from dissipating into the atmosphere.
In the stratospheric ozone workshop, teams will learn how to identify the presence of ultraviolet rays in the stratosphere, which contains the protective layer of ozone that blocks much of the harmful UV rays. They will model the destruction of ozone molecules and detect the ability of different materials to block UV rays.
Teams also will discover how life has adapted and currently exists under the harsh conditions in Antarctica. They will predict and explore how humans would survive on Antarctica and find researchers lost in a white out.
"A valuable component of Science Explorers is fulfilled when teachers and students return from the workshops to their schools and jointly present the activities and concepts they have learned to their colleagues and classmates," said Science Explorers coordinator Lannie Hagan. "Thus, a greater audience is reached than just those attending the workshop."
The Science Explorers Program, presented since 1987 in many communities across the state, focuses on different themes each year integrating literacy, history, geography and math with the science-related topic. The program allows teachers and their students to work side by side before the curriculum is implemented in the classroom.
For more information on the Science Explorers Program call Hagan at (303) 492-0771 or visit the Science Discovery Web site at .