A lot of you have asked me to share my experience here at the Biosphere 2. (I can't believe it is already here!) I am happy do do so, but be prepared, this will be a LONG post. I have already taken a ton of pictures and am so excited to share what has happened these past two days! And day two isn't even over! I will tell you all about what is going to happen last, and I will post pictures of it tomorrow!
The anticipation was high as I woke up at 4:00 am Friday morning to get into the already packed car by 5:30 am. We said a final farewell to our home and started toward our new home for the next two weeks, the Biosphere 2! I know I have said this before, but for those who don't know, I have been in love with the Biosphere 2 since I was twelve. I always wanted to be the marine biologist who took care of the ocean. I now get to live on the campus for two weeks!
After a two and a half hour drive, we came up to this beauty:
I made Matt stop to take a picture out of the window. I was beside myself with excitement! We were here!! The next hour or two were spent checking in, unloading and finding our casitas. We are split up, Matt is in a casita with all men and I am in a casita with one other woman. The positive is that I have my own bathroom!
It is kind of dark, but the above picture is the door to my room. (I know, I am a nerd!)
And this is my room! I have a full and a twin bed in here, but there is nobody else in my room with me. I chose the bigger bed, but I have to shake out the covers at night to check for scorpions and other buggies. I had three moths try to spend the night with me on my pillow. No thank you!
After we dropped off all of our stuff, we headed to the cafe for breakfast. I sit down and someone proceeds to tell me that we have to make our bed super tight in the morning because last year a participant was stung getting into bed by a scorpion. If you know about my cockroach experience in Roatan, you know I do NOT like anything creepy crawly. *shudder* I check the floor, the chairs, the bed, my shoes, my clothes, the toilet, EVERYTHING!
We were then asked to join the team in the Sahara room. We met everyone and had an overview of what the institute would look like. We had to fill out all of the paperwork (necessity, but not the most fun thing in the world) and we heard from one of our leaders, Greg. Greg is a high school physics teacher and he was AMAZING! Talk about animation and engaging personality! Everyone else got a turn to speak as well and things looked great!
After a short break we headed back into the Sahara room to find this at our tables:
Morning inquiry activity! We got to work with a partner to perform an activity with water, soda and alka-seltzer where we put different foods, a popcorn kernel, grape and raisin in with different substances and watched what happened!
All photos are taken with my phone at this point, and it does not take the best pictures, but it had to do in that instance.
After that experiment, we headed to the cafe for lunch, which was bbq beef and shredded pork with salad and cookies. We had to write on an index card what inquiry meant to us and turn it in at the end, which Greg turned into a Wordle. I had no idea what those were, but I love it and will use it in the future! Check it out!
When we walked back into the classroom after lunch, we found this amazing beauty at our table:
I know, I know, I am a nerd and a half. I love school supplies, especially extremely fancy science journals. This thing was decked out! It has a table of contents, grid paper for all of my notes and even a page on how to do a science notebook properly. Did you know that it is a legal document? you need to sign and date the bottom of each page so that it can not be stolen, and DON'T rip it out! I found it pretty funny.
From there we got to do an amazingly cool experiment with artificial snow. It is the same kind of thing that they put in diapers, but they put the substance in the indoor ski slopes and freeze it so that people can ski on it. I had a ton of fun playing with it.
This is the artificial snow before. That is about a tablespoon of powder.
Artificial snow after having water added to it. This used to be that tablespoon, now it is about a cup and a half. I had too much fun playing with it! I couldn't believe how fast it absorbed and fluffed up!
That night we got to meet the man who heads up the grant that brought us here. He played a ton with liquid nitrogen. I don't have a picture with me, (Matt has it) but I got to dip flowers in the nitrogen and shatter it with my hands. So cool! I did, however get some fun pictures.
ICE CREAM!!! (Needed sugar, they forgot it! Oops!)
This was after an amazing dinner IN the Biosphere! When we were done with that, we got the surprise of being given a night tour of the Biosphere. (There were soooooo many cockroaches! ICK! One even climbed up Matt's leg! Hahaha!) It was quite incredible and looks entirely different in the dark. We got to go up in the library! That was my favorite part of my tour!
There was a glass square at the top that looked straight down to the ground through the spiral staircase. This pic is from the top looking down.
Me standing on the glass! Daring, huh?
I like the picture with my shoes in it. It looks like I am defying gravity!
Matt took my picture from down the stairs looking up through the glass.
We also laid down on the glass to make it look like we were falling through. So fun!
I took some beautiful shots outside when we left after we left the South Lung. I have some shots of that as well.
Matt in the South Lung entrance.
Biosphere lit at night!
My absolute favorite picture of the night!
This morning, after locking myself out of my room in my pajamas, we went on a scavenger hunt for some surprises. I woke up and put on my purple plaid shirt and my purple heather shirt and went to the outdoor classroom. Once there they had us grab colors, and my color was purple! It was meant to be! We started out by finding hats, then we found water bottles. After the water bottles we were sent to a very dark room where she turned on the lights and we were gifted iPod Touches! 32 Gigs too! If that was not enough, we found lanyards, cables to hook our touches to the SMARTBoard and TV, a neck cooler thing, t-shirts, posters, a curriculum book for a Private Eye Loupe (Magnifying glass thing)... AND... an iPad 2 with the new, super cool magnetic covers! (Mine is blue) We are spending all day tomorrow learning how to use them and create really cool things! (I will post pics of these things tomorrow!)
After receiving these AMAZING gifts, we got to go into the Biosphere and collect samples. We got to wander off the beaten path, take leaves, water and soil and bring it back to the main room to explore and observe and write in our journals.
The Ocean!
Me getting ready to take the rainforest research path.
I am planning on using this pic as a writing prompt.
Rainforest.
Another research entrance into the rainforest.
This is a video of the rainforest area. Hopefully it works!
The waterfall area of the rainforest.
A leaf skeleton that you can't really see but is super cool!
Underneath the pond in the rainforest.
Taking a soil sample at the ocean!
The control center of it all... Parts of it have air blowing so hard it will blow you sideways.
The tourist path through the desert.
Taking water samples!
More water samples
A beautiful flower in the Mangrove area.
Vines in the Mangrove area.
Matt and I with the ocean in the background just off to the right.
Video of the ocean area and the Savannah area.
All of our samples. RC (a guy in my group) was so organized!
Journal entries. So fun! You can see how cool the pages are!
The skeletal leaf so you can actually see it.
We then had a yummy lunch and met again in another room to talk about the states of matter and what salt does to the temperature of ice. Once we talked about this we got to create ice cream in a bag!
What does salt do to the temperature of ice?
Ice Cream in a bag supplies!
Mixing ingredients!
Shake, shake, shake! Shake that ice cream!
Shake it some more!
Eating the fruits of our labor. It, too, needed more sugar. So sad! But so fun and actually kinda good.
Our evening ended with a delicious dinner and a talk by one of the original Biospherians! Not only did she live in it, she helped design it and went on the expeditions to gather the plants. It was amazing! She was wonderful to listen to and it was fascinating to hear about what it was like for her in there.
Overall, today was a spectacular day. I loved every minute and I can't wait for the next 13 days!!
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