Adventures In Penguin Sitting: An Open Ended Experiment In Thermal Dynamic Equilibrium.

The Scenario

A friend of mine, Anna Paquin, has recently returned from Antarctica, bringing with her a young penguin for Sea World. Paquin's Penguin prefers a water temperature of 10 degree Ceisius. She would like your lab group to watch over the penguin for a few hours, but before she will let you penguin-sit she wants to make sure that you can keep the penguin feeling comfortable.

 

Visit Scientists In Action At the Penguin Lab Student Gallery 2001

 

 

 

 

Recently scientists at Morrison Labs tackled the "Adventures In Penguin Sitting Challenge." Their goal was to get 200 ml of water down to 10 degrees Celsius as fast as possible and then maintain that 10 degree Celsius temperature for fifteen minutes. Our scientists used a variety of creative strategies to keep the water at the 10 degree Celsius thermal equilibrium. They used everything from blowing into the water, to using the sun and flashlights, to sacrificing their own hands (for the good of science and their penguins) by submerging them in the cold ice water in the beaker. Some created heat through friction by rubbing their hands, while others used their own sweatshirts to keep the temperature constant.

 

This site has a nice slide show with lots of penguin pictures.

 

http://www.siec.k12.in.us/~west/proj/penguins/main.html

This KId Zone is a great site for penguin basics.

http://www.kidzone.ws/animals/penguins/

The March of the Penguins Movie Web Site

http://wip.warnerbros.com/marchofthepenguins/

http://techtv.mit.edu/file/149/

 

Watch a video of the MIT Proteus Penguin Boat

 

 

Read about it in your science text book on pages 12-17 or visit the web site above and find out about the boat and the inventors James Czarnowski and Michael Traintafyllou from MIT.

http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/www/pengphotos.html

http://www.rbbi.com/folders/tech/product/penguin.htm#proteus1

http://www.oceanfootage.com/stockfootage/Box_Fish//?DVfSESSCKIE=efa4a83a04b6d42cf75d4db68e8797cca2c3a7aa

More Examples of Animal Based Technology

This is a great site for learning more about this topic. They have examples of:

bats, cockroaches, fireflies, geckos, horses, mussels, penguins, sharks, spiders

http://www.nwcreation.net/animaltech.html

http://www.carbuyersnotebook.com/archives/2005/06/mercedes_bionic.htm

http://www.ourmedia.org/node/15888

"To realise the Mercedes-Benz bionic car, the engineers at the Mercedes-Benz Technology Centre and the DaimlerChrysler Research department have for the first time looked for a specific example in nature which not only approximates to the idea of an aerodynamic, safe, comfortable and environmentally compatible car in terms of details, but as a formal and structural whole. The example arrived at was the boxfish."

 

"Despite its boxy, cube-shaped body, this tropical fish is in fact outstandingly streamlined and therefore represents an aerodynamic ideal. With an accurately constructed model of the boxfish the engineers in Stuttgart were able to achieve a wind drag coefficient of just 0.06 in the wind tunnel."

National Geographic Biomicry

 

Biomimetics
http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2008/04/biomimetics/tom-mueller-text

 
 

http://www.velcro.com/kidzone.html

 

Check out has a scienctist invented velcro by observing nature carefully!

VELCRO®

(illustration of microscopic view)

 

How big is a micron?

http://www.cellsalive.com/howbig.htm

Thermal Equilibrium Examples

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