On March 2nd, Science Cheerleader Jeannie (former Tampa Bay Buccaneers cheerleader and U.S. Navy SeaBee) and your fearless Science Cheerleader event coordinator Bart brought citizen science to students from Hillsborough County, Florida as part of STEM Day at MacDill Air Force Base in Tampa.
The event, hosted by the Air Force, attracted over 1,300 students, many of them in the Junior Reserve Officer Training Corps (JROTC). Jeannie and I showed participants two GLOBE programs –the Soil Moisture Active Passive (SMAP) and GLOBE Cloud observations–as well as a hands-on coin toss project where people measure the “fairness” of the state-themed U.S. quarter coins. Our goal was to show how students can contribute to real science.
The students (and their teachers) kept us busy asking some great questions. The only thing I didn’t get to do was take a tour of the KC-135 tanker aircraft, but that’s me.
Talking Citizen Science at MacDill Air Force Base
