The 8th Polar Day (topic: Polar Oceans) elicited so much interest that it turned into a full week of events that took place across the globe from some likely places such as Edinburgh, Winnipeg and Nuuk to some not so likely places like Brazil & Malaysia. Take a peek at some of the exciting highlights from classrooms, radio stations, field schools and public outreach sessions around the world. Edinburgh, UK: March 14th - 15th The Dynamic Earth science center hosted a hands-on public session with researchers from the Scottish Association for Marine Science who displayed Arctic research footage from recent expeditions. The most popular part of the event was when people got a chance to don the equipment worn by polar scientists. We may have just h...

Science Centres in Canada, the U.S. and Mexico connected to IPY scientists in the first of many live events starting today (March 17) at 1600UTC. Students were able to interact with and ask questions directly of the scientists using videoconferencing technologies. Andy Mahoney (Scott Base, sea ice), Russ Hopcroft (Alaska, zooplankton and the Arctic Ocean Diversity project), Martin Nweeia (Massachusetts, narwhal tusks), Irene Schloss (Quebec, plankton ecology) and Rachael Mueller (Oregon, physical oceanography) talked about their research and answered students’ questions about climate change, snow and ice, and polar organisms. Students at UNAM (Mexico) and the Chicago Museum of Science and Industry gave presentations on climate change and its impacts on local and polar environments. Stude...

The Gimli Connection to the Arctic and Antarctic (EoI 1186) project is sponsored by the New Iceland Heritage Museum (NIHM). It looks into the history of our area to discover the connections with the Arctic and Antarctic regions of planet Earth. Called New Iceland before Manitoba was extended north, we are close, geographically, to the Arctic. However, some thought we would have a problem finding a connection to the Antarctic. Not so. We learned that sled dogs from the west shore of Lake Winnipeg went with two Antarctic explorers, Shackleton and Byrd. The research project was on. We hope to educate our patrons, our school kids, and our summer visitors, as we have educated ourselves. We have two display windows at NIHM with artefacts and displays and two looseleaf binders full of informatio...