The Rubber Duck: A Scientific Pioneer

So I’ve decided that a funny sort of take on my beat this week is just what people need to relieve some stress. This made me laugh; I hope it makes you laugh too. I threw in the scientific parts to give you your dose of education for the day.


Global warming (insert deep, dramatic, formidable music here) has the scientific world worried (crescendo to a high note that makes your heart want to break and then just leaves you hanging). The ice caps are melting and the sea levels are rising.

NASA is even getting involved in an attempt to understand the changing levels of the oceans which may (more likely than not) be tied to the changing climate temperature.

"In the last century, the total change in sea level was about 8 inches," Seelye Martin, the program manager for NASA's Earth sciences division, said. "Right now, it's headed to more like 12 inches so we're seeing a greater contribution from the ice sheets."

Scientists are attempting to find out information on the melting ice sheets. One of their more recent focuses has been in Greenland.

The Jakobshavn Glacier is melting at a rapid rate; it is responsible for shedding almost 7 percent of Greenland’s ice.

Fast-flowing rivers are surging through tunnels, known as moulins, in the glacier. Scientists want to know where all that water is going (because it has to go somewhere). But tracking water from the glacial melt rivers in ocean water is difficult (obviously; water in water).

Alberto Behar, a robotics expert from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, had an idea to drop a probe with a positioning censor and a satellite telephone into one of Jakobshavn’s moulins in hopes of tracking where the water ends up. Scientists have speculated that the water ends up in Baffin Bay – the ice-laden body of water between northeast Canada and Greenland – but they need proof.

The probe was dispatched and never heard from again.

Oops.

No worries; on to Plan B: a brigade of 90 rubber ducks.

Each duck was labeled with an email address and the words "science experiment" and "reward" written in English, Danish and the native Inuit language. Behar then set the toys loose in a moulin.

The general idea is that people, mostly fisherman, will find the ducks and notify NASA where exactly they found the yellow toy. This will help scientists track the water that melts and then flows out of Jakobshavn.

No one has contacted NASA yet about finding a duck. But it is the middle of winter so Baffin Bay is frozen solid. The ducks could merely be stuck in the ice.

Scientists are optimistic about contacts starting next summer when things start to thaw out.