Day two of the Space Weather Science Camp

On Monday the Finnish students sat down in the lecture hall at UNIS, University Centre in Svalbard, for their first day during the Space Weather Science Camp in Longyearbyen . For 3 hours they listened to each other, instead of the teachers. The student groups had prepared as home work 4 thematic essays for learning the background and the processes leading to Space Weather events. And now these were presented to the audience, the fellow students. Of course the teachers were there, too, kind of acting as judges as if being in the Idols competition, giving their comments and remarks on the works and presentations. All groups were applauded twice for their extensive preparation. The rare cases where preparation was inadequate, were handled by stylish slides and summaries, or creativeness by the newly established stand-up comics entertainment on physics (quadruple applauds…).

Walking to UNIS for the first lecture, fresh snow in Longyearbyen. (Photo: E. Turunen)

How do bees orientate using the magnetic field of the Earth? (Photo: E. Turunen)

In their meeting afterwards, the teachers concluded that all groups had done serious work, and would have basic knowledge to handle the real action on Tuesday. Then the program of the Science Camp includes forecasting space weather for the evening and the incoherent scatter experiment using the EISCAT Svalbard Radar. Will the students get aurora in their radar beam? We will see tonight.