With Bethel Author—

NMS Students Journey To The Bottom Of The Ocean

By Eliza Hallabeck

During multiple presentations on Thursday, October, 14, Newtown Middle School students traveled with Bethel resident Karen Romano Young to the ocean floor and the Arctic through photos and video as she spoke about two of her most recent adventures as an author.

“She’s going to talk to you about her explorations of the arctic and ocean floor, to which she has traveled,” said Newtown Middle School library/media specialist Jeanne Bugay as she introduced Ms Young to students in the school’s auditorium. Ms Young also spoke to the students about plate tectonics, which is part of the science curriculum at the school, according to Ms Bugay.

As she began the presentation, Ms Young asked the students to think about how Christopher Columbus changed humanity’s perception of the world from flat to round, and how Galileo Galilei broke the news to humanity that Earth is not the center of the universe.

Science changes, Ms Young explained, as new discoveries are made, and when she was in middle school people did not believe the tectonic plates, sections of the Earth’s crust, moved.

“I’m a person who really likes science,” said Ms Young, “and really likes stories.”

Ms Young started her career as a writer while working for Scholastic.

Her most recent adventure was to the Arctic from June to July of last summer when she traveled aboard the “US Coast Guard Cutter Healy, an icebreaker, during NASA’s [Impacts of Climate Change on the Eco-Systems and Chemistry of the Arctic Pacific Environment (ICESCAPE)] expedition,” according to her website. Ms Young shared photos of polar bears and video of the icebreaker traveling through ice.

Ms Young next described why the story of how plate tectonics was discovered interested her. Marie Tharp, now remembered for her maps of the ocean floor, was working hard on those maps when she discovered the ocean floor was moving over the course of time, Ms Young said to the students. Her employer called her theory “girl talk,” but, after firing her, eventually gave her an office to continue her studies. Ms Tharp’s story, Ms Young said, is exactly the kind she is drawn to; a story of someone working hard in the background who eventually turns out to be right.

Before traveling to the Arctic, Ms Young traveled in the bottom of the Pacific Ocean in the area called East Pacific Rise.

“It’s about 1,000 miles west of Costa Rica, at a place where two of the gigantic tectonic plates –– pieces of the Earth’s crust –– are pulling apart. Molten lava from the earth’s core bubbles up there and creates an environment where there is incredibly rich life,” Ms Young wrote on her website.

Ms Young shared photos of her trip, and video that was taken as the Deep Submergence Vehicle Alvin brought her and its other passengers to the floor of the Pacific Ocean.

Ms Young also shared slideshow images of some of her published works, Doodlebug, the most recent, Cobwebs, Outside In, Bug Science, and Crime Scene Science.

For more information on Ms Romano, see her website www.karenromanoyoung.com.