Curriculum Index Curriculum Objectives Curriculum Outline Student Pages Virginia SOLs Lesson 1: Preparing For Your Journey Lesson 2: Meet Your Ship Lesson 3: Plotting The Course Lesson 4: Adding It Up Lesson 5: Environmental Impact Bibliography

STUDENT PAGES - LESSON TWO: MEET YOUR SHIP

1. Use the internet to find additional information about ships.

2.

  1. If you are assigned a ship by your teacher:
    1. Write down the ship's Id number and the name of your ship on the front cover of your Captain's Log.
    2. Use Google or Yahoo! to locate general information about your ship, such as its home port, type of ship, what type of cargo it transports, measurements, how many crew members, etc.
    3. Use The World Factbook to locate information about the home port for your ship such as natural resources, population, size, etc. The home port is the country of origin, or where the ship is docked when it is not sailing the seas.
    4. Complete the Lesson 2 section of your Captain's Log.

  2. If you are NOT assigned a ship by your teacher:
    1. Go to http://www.oceanweather.com/data/.
    2. Click on an area of the world that you would like to study.
    3. When you click on an ocean area, you are taken to a page that shows a close up map of the area you clicked on. Click on "Marine Observations" at the top of the page.
    4. On the Marine Observations page, you'll see red, blue, and purple wind barbs. Buoys are shown in red, ships are shown in blue and CMAN (Coastal Manned Stations around the U.S.) are shown in purple. We are interested in the blue barbs. You'll also see pressure isobars (concentric circles) with the latest pressure reading.
    5. Next to the blue barbs you will find a 4 or 5 digit ID Code that is either made up of all letters or numbers & letters. This ID Code is the ship's identification number. All numbers means it is a bouy. Don't choose a buoy.
    6. For some ships, the ID code might be hard to read. In the upper right hand corner of the page, click on "Observation Table". A new window will open with a list of all of the ships, buoys, and manned stations in this geographic area. Use this table to select a ship to track. The ships are usually located at the bottom of the page. Write down the Ship's ID number.
    7. Go to http://www.sailwx.info/shiptrack/.
    8. Enter your ship's ID in the field marked "Search for one ship by call sign:" and press search. It may take a moment for all of the data to be collected for display.
    9. Make sure that the ship is reporting the ship's name, barometric pressure, dewpoint, wind speed, and water temperature. If not, go back to the "Observation Table" and select another ship. Also make sure that the ship is moving (not in port). You can verify this by looking at the latitude and longitude data. If it is the same for several reporting periods, the ship is in port and you need to pick another ship. This is a trial and error process but you will find many ships reporting this data.
    10. Ships report every 3, 6, or 12 hours. If there are just a few data entries, go to the top of the map, change the value from 240 to 480 to get the past 48 hours information.
    11. Once a ship is chosen, determine which ocean map you will need to plot the ship's progress. The ocean maps are named using the same naming scheme that is used in the address bar of the "Observation Table" page. When you click on the "Observation Table" link, the map area is listed in the address bar of the browser. It looks like this for the Northern Indian Ocean area, http://www.oceanweather.com/data/Indian-Northern/marine_text.html. This means, for this example, you would pick the Indian Ocean-Northern Region map. Print the map that you will need from the maps listed below.
    12. Write down the ship's Id number and the name of your ship on the front cover of your Captain's Log.
    13. Use Google or Yahoo! to locate general information about your ship, such as its home port, type of ship, what type of cargo it transports, measurements, how many crew members, etc.
    14. Use The World Factbook to locate information about the home port for your ship such as natural resources, population, size, etc. The home port is the country of origin, or where the ship is docked when it is not sailing the seas.
    15. Complete the Lesson 2 section of your Captain's Log.

Curriculum Index Curriculum Objectives Curriculum Outline Student Pages Virginia SOLs Lesson 1: Preparing For Your Journey Lesson 2: Meet Your Ship Lesson 3: Plotting The Course Lesson 4: Adding It Up Lesson 5: Environmental Impact Bibliography


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