Students inspired by real life applications in the field

Last week, as part of Smart Waikato's Secondary School Employer Partnerships (SSEP), MetOcean Solutions worked on a 3-day program for the Year 10 math students from Raglan Area School.    

The students were introduced to our work at MetOcean Solutions on the first day. Our team showed how math is a fundamental part of what we do and discussed real-life applications, illustrating the importance of our products and services. The students got to plot their own sea surface temperature contour maps.  We discussed mapping concepts, units and conversion.   

On the second day, the students braved a blustery day in the field. They participated in an exercise where they estimated current velocity in Whāingaroa Harbour using oranges as markers.   

By observing the orange moving with the tide, they could see the eddies created as the tide went out of the estuary, and they timed how long it took the oranges to pass a predetermined point.  .  

The students also deployed the Moana Project's Mangōpare sensor as part of the field activity. This sensor is an instrument used by fishers to gather temperature data which we use to model sea temperature (Check out Moana's marine heatwave forecasts), and climate change.  

On the program's final day, we used the data collected in the field by the students to calculate current speed and velocity. The students plotted the current velocities at different locations of the channel, and we compared the speed of the oranges to average walking speed for some context.      

The partnership with Raglan Area School was a great opportunity to expose our local students to what we do at MetOcean Solutions, showing how exciting and rewarding a career in oceanography can be.  

Thank you to the Raglan Area School class of oceanographers for helping us discover the estuary current speed during an outgoing  tide! 

MetOcean Solutions is part of Smart Waikato's Secondary School Employer Partnerships, an award-winning initiative raising student aspirations, resulting in higher achievement, retention and better transitions. Read more about it at https://smartwaikato.co.nz/ssep/ 

The Students plotted the path of the orange, as well as timing how long it took to reach the finish point.