Bob Gotwals started the class off with introducing himself, and Jenna. Then he proceeded to talk about Shodor, the Scholars Program, and what the program is trying to accomplish. He then proceeded by talking about the new Apprenticeship program and working with the NSF to get more students interested in math and science at a younger age. After introducing the program, Bob discussed how one would get into the apprenticeship program.
After the introductions, Bob showed the students a rope "trick" to demonstrate observational and experimental science. A third type, theoretical science, was introduced by bringing up Einstein. Once these three types of sciences were introduced, and the class discussed them, the students there were asked to try to tie a knot in a rope that is a complete circle. The moral of the activity was you cannot forget about the different types of science, i.e.. you cannot forget about observational science when running experiments. Then, Bob asked the students about computational science and had another activity with ropes to demonstrate the point.
After lunch, Jenna talked to the students about patterns and pattern recognition. They discussed the different uses for pattern recognition such as weather prediction, forensics, and slope. The Interactivate applet Tessellate was used. After Tessellate, another Interactivate applet called Decode de Code, which is a cryptography applet, was used.
The next activity was about the weather. Each group of students received a copy of a grid map of a local farmer's field. The purpose of the exercise was to use elevation to figure out where the water would run to. Using Excel, and Gnuplot, the students generated a 3D representation of the field to figure out where the water would run off to. Which led into the next activity, talking about the Water Erosion Prediction Project, which is a simulation software that allows you to input the specifics of the soil and plant grow, and outputs the predicted amount of soil lose to erosion. The students then had to work together in groups of two to do a little mini project to make comparisons with WEPP and then present what they found to the class.
The final activity was using the Climate Data Library, where the students looked at the sea floor, and by suing Gnuplot, they were able to generate a 3D graph of their particular portion of the sea floor.