MacGyver this! New DYI experiment shows students the physics of climate change Fishing line, paper clips, glass marble, glue -- no, not the makings of a MacGyver episode but a new experiment that lets students precisely measure the effects of global warming on oceans. Developed by QUT physicists Dr Stephen Hughes and Darren Pearce and published recently in the European Journal of Physics , the experiment uses Archimedes' principle to demonstrate that oceans expand as they heat up, causing sea levels to rise, even without factoring in melting ice sheets.
Dr Hughes said there were two main causes of rising sea levels -- thermal expansion and melting land-based ice. "Thermal expansion is responsible for most of the rising sea levels during the past century but an increasing amount of rising levels into the future will be due to the melting Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets, as well as melting glaciers across the globe, especially the Himalayas," he said. Scientists have previously confirmed the average sea level rose 200mm and the average ocean temperature increased by 0.85 oC between 1880 and 2010. "It's interesting to apply this experiment to the established 1880-2010 increase," he said. "One of the key equations used in this experiment implies that most of the thermal expansion has occurred in the top 25 per cent of the oceans. "Although the rising sea level is a global phenomenon and will affect all coastal cities, some places are more vulnerable than others. "For example, the sea level on the North American Atlantic coast north of Cape Hatteras is rising three to four times faster than the global average, which has been attributed to a reduction in the strength of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Current."
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High-res image on Flickr: https://www.flickr.com/photos/104605572@N02/22037446431/
Paper: http://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/0143-0807/36/6/065033
Stephen Hughes: http://staff.qut.edu.au/staff/hughess/
Science and Engineering Faculty: https://www.qut.edu.au/science-engineering
School of Chemistry, Physics and Mechanical Engineering: https://www.qut.edu.au/science-engineering/our-schools/school-of-chemistry-physics-and-mechanical-engineering
European Journal of Physics