HU Team Awarded $500,000 Educational Grant for Nauticus Display

Hampton, VA - The National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration's (NOAA) Office of Education has awarded a joint Hampton University/ University of Wisconsin- Madison team a $500,000 grant to develop and implement the educational applications of NOAA’s “Science on a Sphere” (SOS) visualization technology.

NOAA’s SOS was installed at Nauticus, The National Maritime Center (TNMC) in Norfolk in June. The 40-pound carbon-fiber sphere is six feet in diameter and hangs about five feet off the ground, creating the impression that the viewer is hovering above the Earth, witnessing global processes just as an astronaut in space might do. Animated imagery currently includes the Earth's topography, bathymetry, real-time global weather satellite, and global ocean currents and temperatures. Viewers can watch 500 years of changing climate or travel back to the time when the Earth's continents were one large land mass.

The two-year award to the HU/UW team was made by NOAA under its Environmental Literacy Grants program. Under this project, the UW’s Space Science and Engineering Center will prepare and transmit global composites of Earth imagery to TNMC museum’s SOS system. The satellite imagery will be prepared in a variety of formats to provide appealing and informative displays of atmospheric phenomena, and associated oceanographic features.

HU’s Center for Atmospheric Sciences and its School of Business will lead an educational program associated with the display of the environmental data provided by the UW. The educational program will be developed and conducted jointly by HU, UW, NOAA, and TNMC education and outreach staffs. Kiosks will be installed to enable SOS viewers to view the detailed structure of any environmental phenomena viewed on the sphere, such as a hurricane, on a high-definition, plasma-screen monitor.

The viewer will also be able to execute Problem Based Learning (PBL) modules to learn about the causes and effects of the environmental phenomena being displayed on the SOS.

HU and UW will also provide atmospheric and oceanic science faculty speakers and graduate student docents to support the educational applications of SOS at Nauticus.

Finally, an internet webpage will be constructed to enable the SOS and associated kiosk material developed under this program to be used by teachers and students in science classrooms across the nation.