Antarctic A Guide -Kids

11111© 2001 SESAME WORKSHOPReprinted with permission from SESAME WORKSHOP

COVER PHOTO © DOUG ALLANWritten by Edward G. Atkins, Ph.D and Larry Engel. Designer: Jaye MedaliaThis book was prepared under the auspices of, and in cooperation with, the Office of PolarPrograms and the Informal Science Education Program, National Science Foundation,Arlington, VA 22230. © 2001 Sesame Workshop All rights reserved.

TTTTTABLEABLEABLEABLEABLE O O O O OFFFFF C C C C CONTENTSONTENTSONTENTSONTENTSONTENTS2 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . GOING SOUTH

3 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . GETTING AROUND ANTARCTICA

4 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .WALKING AROUND THE WORLD

5 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . FROZEN DESERT

7 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . MORE ICE

8 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . FROM THE MOON AND MARS

9 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . STAYING ALIVE AT 80° BELOW

11. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . LIFE

13 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . PENGUINS

14 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . SEALS

15 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . WHALES

16 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . NORTH POLE/SOUTH POLE

17. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .WHITE OUT

19 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . MOUNTAINS & VOLCANOES

20 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . LONG DAYS/LONG NIGHTS

21 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . SCIENCE

23 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . OZONE

25 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . FRONTIERING

27. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . EXPLORERS

29. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . GONDWANALAND

30 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . OWNERSHIP

This material is basedupon work supported bythe National ScienceFoundation under GrantNo. OPP-0090495

To learn more about Antarctica, go to:http://tea.rice.edu/science_education/researcher_opprojects.html

22222 © 2001 SESAME WORKSHOPReprinted with permission from SESAME WORKSHOP

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elcome to Antarctica�the giant continent at the bot-tom of the Earth. If you enjoy record-breaking facts,then Antarctica may be the place for you. It�s the cold-est, windiest, driest and highest continent in the world.It�s also the most isolated. This world of snow and ice, of

six months of darkness and six months of daylight, sits alone. It is more than2,800 miles from Africa, 2,000 miles from Australia and New Zealand, and650 miles from South America.

Because of its location and its bitter cold, Antarctica is one of Earth�s lastfrontiers. In fact, it hadn�t even been seen by anyone until 1820. Even today,no one lives there permanently. But people do visit. Some are tourists, curi-ous about this frontier continent. Most, however, are scientists and the peoplewho operate research stations. The scientists look for clues to Earth�s pastand Earth�s future. And they study its unique wildlife.

Tourists and scientists can get to Antarctica by boat or by plane. Many whogo by boat travel from the tip of South America to the Antarctic Peninsula, avoyage that takes people through some of the roughest seas in the world.

Scientists headed for the main U.S. research outpost at McMurdo Stationusually fly there. They use special planes that have skis instead of wheels toland on �skiways� made of ice.

PLANES, BOATS AND TRACTORS.Planes that fly to Antarctica have skisinstead of wheels. They land on icewaysrather than runways. Visitors flying tothe frozen continent see a bleak, icylandscape.

Boats must sail through dangerousice packs and rough waters.

Tractors and helicopters are the mostcommon form of transportation once avisitor arrives.

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ntarctica is very hard toget to because it is so faraway from where mostpeople live. Early ex-plorers also had trouble

getting there because of sea ice.That�s the ice that forms and floatson the ocean and surrounds Antarc-tica for many miles. In winter, thisice, which can be up to 10 feet thick,forms a barrier 30 to 900 miles widearound the land. Because of sea ice,Antarctica doubles in size each win-ter. In summer, much of the ice stripgets thinner and starts to break up.

The loose pieces of sea ice are adanger to most boats. Onlyvery expensive boats with �ice-strengthened� hulls are safe. So to-day many of the people working inAntarctica get there by airplane.

The 2,500 or so Americans whowork in Antarctica�or �on theice��get around in many ways. Theyuse helicopters; track vehicles calledSprytes, ships, boats, airplanes, andeven snowmobiles!

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1. An Icebreaker plows through seaice. 2. In summer, the sea ice breaksup. 3. Snowmobiles are better herethan station wagons! 4. The tracks onthe Spryte grip the ice.

Just a few years ago, anyone whowintered in Antarctica was cut offfrom the outside world for monthsat a time. But life there isn�t as hardtoday. Giant cargo planes sometimesdrop fresh food and supplies by para-chute. (Planes almost never land inAntarctica in the winter because ofthe darkness and cold weather.)

Communication with the rest ofthe world is also much better nowbecause of satellites and other mod-ern technology. Using electronic mailon the Internet, you can make aroundtrip to Antarctica in seconds.Being able to communicate withfriends back home this way makes theworld seem a little smaller and life onthe chilliest continent a little bit easier.

BELOW: Food and supplies aresometimes delivered by airplane orhelicopter.

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Most maps have North at thetop and South at the bottom(above). But from the SouthPole, every direction is North!Walk around the South Pole(right) and you walk around theworld!

order to keep on the same schedule, some people in Ant-arctica, especially aviators, use a special time, called Zulutime, all over the continent. Zulu time is the time foundin the time zone that runs through Greenwich, England.So, when it is 12:00 noon in England, it can be �noon�everywhere on the large continent of Antarctica.

Directions are also a little strange in Antarctica. Whenyou are at the South Pole, every direction is North. Howcan that be? If you look at a compass or a map you nor-mally place North (N) away from you and then South (S)is toward you, East (E) is to your right and West (W) is toyour left. Now, go back to your imaginary trip to the SouthPole and look at the map carefully. Every direction isNorth. What an interesting place to be!

alking around theworld in which you livewould be almost impos-sible. You would have tocross oceans, and it would take

a very long time. In Antarctica, you can walk all theway around the world without crossing any oceans, andif you walk around close to the South Pole, it is fast.Just walk around the Pole, and you have walked aroundthe world!

TTTTTIMEIMEIMEIMEIME Z Z Z Z ZONESONESONESONESONESWalking around the world is also walking around the

clock. There are many time zones set up around theworld, and, at the same moment, the time in London,New York, Los Angeles, and Tokyo is different. But allof these time zones come together at the South Pole.

When you move around Antarctica, you often rap-idly move from one time zone to another. You wouldhave to keep resetting your watch if you wanted to knowwhat time it is. And you can�t tell time by the sun, be-cause Antarctica has as much as 24 hours of sunlight insummer and 24 hours of darkness in winter. So, in

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ntarctica is 5,400,000square miles inarea�as big as theU.S. and Mexicocombined. That�s a

lot of land at the bottom of theworld. But 98 percent of it is cov-ered by a thick layer of ice and snow.

The other 2 percent of Antarcticais free of ice and snow. Dry valleysmake up much of that land�andthey are very dry. Rain or snow thereis less than in most deserts.

The climate in the dry valleys ismore like the climate on Mars thanany other place on Earth!

But even the areas that are coveredwith ice and snow are still desert. Thehuge interior of Antarctica is drierthan the Sahara desert in Africa.That�s because it gets only a fewinches of snow each year.

So where does all the ice come

from? Any snow that does fall rarelymelts. New snow piles on older snowand packs the snow below it�untilit becomes ice. This process has beengoing on for millions of years. Inmillions of years, a lot of ice buildsup.

Scientists say the thickest part ofthe ice is 15,000 feet deep. That�sthreemiles thick! And in most places

the ice is around 7,000 feet deep,more than a mile thick.

The ice may be deep and heavy, butit doesn�t stay still. It actually moves.The ice flows from the center of thecontinent to its edges. Along the way

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ABOVE: Glaciers are rivers of ice.Icebergs are the huge chunks thatbreak off where these �rivers� flowinto the ocean.

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it passes through mountain rangesand becomes glaciers. Glaciers areslow-moving rivers of ice. When theice gets to the sea it breaks off fromthe glaciers and makes icebergs.

Some icebergs can be really big.One berg measured by satellite wastwice the size of Rhode Island. Ifengineers could have towed it north,

the iceberg could have supplied thecity of Los Angeles with water for1,000 years!

Of course, not all icebergs are asbig as Rhode Island. But they all havea similar structure. New icebergs areflat on top and rough on the bot-tom. About 85 percent of a berg liesbelow the surface of the ocean. Solook out below!

LEFT: Scientists sometimes spendthree months camping in the dryvalleys, collecting rocks and studyingtheir history. BELOW: Icebergs floaton sea water, but most of the icebergis hidden beneath the surface.

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MMMMMOREOREOREOREORE IIIIICECECECECEMMMMMOREOREOREOREORE I I I I ICECECECECEarlier we talked about an iceberg bigger than Rhode Island�nowimagine one even bigger. It would be the largest floating object in theworld! In the spring of 2000 just such a huge iceberg broke off from

the Antarctic ice. It was 25 miles wide by 170 miles long! Icebergs are givenletters and numbers instead of names, and this one is called B-15. B-15 is solarge that it could cause trouble if it drifted into shipping lanes.

The break-off of B-15 is being watched carefully. The ice on Antarcticais thousands of feet thick, and Antarctica is very, very large. If much of itsice broke off or melted and ran into the ocean, the level of the oceanswould rise and flood many areas of the world.

The B-15 iceberg is so large that you can�tsee the other side of it.

TRY THIS !TRY THIS !TRY THIS !TRY THIS !TRY THIS !Here are some big scientific questions that you can solveby doing a simple experiment at home or in school.

QUESTION 1.QUESTION 1.QUESTION 1.QUESTION 1.QUESTION 1.If all the ice in the Arctic Ocean melted, would it raisethe ocean levels very much?

QUESTION 2.QUESTION 2.QUESTION 2.QUESTION 2.QUESTION 2.If all the ice in Antarctica melted or slid into the ocean,would the sea level go up very much?

In the Antarctic winter, new ice forms in theoceans around Antarctica and spreads out forhundreds of miles. In the summer, most of thissea ice melts.1. Take two large water

glasses and four ice cubes.Stick two ice cubes togetherby pressing them together withyour hands.

2. Put the large ice cube that youhave made upright in one of theglasses and slowly pour water intothe glass until the water is right atthe top of the glass. This is likethe ice in the Arctic Ocean aroundthe North Pole. Now, set the glassaside and let the ice melt. Doesthe glass overflow?

3. Make a second large ice cube justlike the first one. Fill the secondglass to the very top with water, butdo not put in the ice cube yet.(Remember that most of the ice inAntarctica is on land and not floatingin the water, as it is in the Arctic.)Now, drop the ice cube into the fullglass of water.Oops! What happened?

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One way to find meteorites iswith robots. They don�t getcold! Below: look but don�ttouch! Meteorites are num-bered, put in plastic bags, andthen kept frozen until they canbe studied for signs of life fromother planets.

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Scientists believe that bits and pieces ofthe moon and Mars were knocked off whenthey were hit by large objects, such as mete-ors. Some of the meteorites found in Ant-arctica may be from these collisions. Becauseof this, Antarctica turns out to be a goodplace for scientists to study the solar systemand outer space!

eteorites fall on the earth fromtime to time. Many are never foundbecause they fall in the ocean or inthick vegetation or in deserts, where

they look like other rocks and so are never found.The meteorites that fall on Antarctica are trappedin ice and snow. In some places, these meteor-ites are brought to the surface by the moving iceand the effects of the wind, and the scientistsworking there find them. More meteorites havebeen found in Antarctica than in all the rest ofthe world put together!

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TOP: Geologists camp in the dry valleys in pyramid-shaped tents. Each tent has a stove for cooking andheating. ABOVE: Debra Shapiro, a cast member of �3-2-1Contact,� practices getting out of a crevasse, one of thedangers of Antarctica.

here�s a good place to chill out? How aboutAntarctica? During its winter (which is sum-mer in the northern hemisphere), the tem-

perature can drop to a very chilly 127 degrees below zero.Along the coast, the temperatures warm up a bit�tominus 20 degrees F.

If you want to visit during the summer when it�swarmer, you can expect an Antarctic heat wave: Tem-peratures skyrocket to the minus 30s and 40s inland, andcan creep above freezing along the coast.

Sure, Antarctica�s cold. But wait, there�s more! It�s windy.Winds can gust up to 200 miles per hour.

So how do you stay alive at 80 degrees below zero whenthe winds are howling? You have to dress for it! It�s all amatter of putting on the right kinds of clothes�in lay-ers. This helps to keep your body heat in so you don�tfreeze.

Layering is important because it helps keep you fromsweating. If you sweat and get wet, you freeze. Layer-ing�especially with wool clothes�helps you to controlhow warm you need to be.

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BRRRRRR! Even with a fur hood, this visitor to Antarcticafinds it hard to stay warm.

When you start to heat up from working on the ice,you take off some layers, so you don�t get wet. Whenyou�re finished, you put the layers back on.

So what does a visitor to Antarctica wear? Here�s achecklist of handy items that you can�t live without: Longunderwear (tops and bottoms), wool shirts, wool pants,wool mittens, wool hats, face masks, and wool scarves.Down vests, heavy cotton wind pants, leather over-mittens, goggles, and really warm boots are also part ofthe gear. Finishing off your Antarctic outfit is adown-filled parka with a hood that has fur around it.

To stay alive at 80 below, you have to pay careful at-tention to your face, feet and hands. People lose a lot ofheat through these parts of the body. These freeze firstand most easily. Warm clothes�and lots of them�help protect workers from frostbite. And protectingexposed skin from the wind is important, too.That�s why parkas have warm, soft, fur trim�to helpprotect the face.

Visitors to Antarctica also need to protect their eyesfrom the glaring sun. In Antarctica, the air is crystalclear, and the sun shines 24 hours a day during the sum-mer. The brightness reflects off the ice, so without sun-glasses or goggles, people could go snowblind�a verypainful condition.

In Antarctica, people eat a lot�more than twice whatthey�d eat anyplace else. People need the energy in thefood to produce enough heat to keep the body warm.Remember, clothes keep the cold out and the heat in.But it�s your body that produces the heat in the firstplace.

Drinking a lot of fluids is also important. Even thoughit�s bitter cold, your body still loses a lot of water throughevaporation when you breathe.

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LEFT. Crampons�spiked iron plateson the bottoms ofshoes�help keeppeople fromslipping on the ice.Ropes are tiedaround peoplewalking togetheron the ice to keepthem from gettinglost.ABOVE: Layers oflong underwear,pants, heavy woolshirts and vestshelp keep peoplewarm. Glasses helpprotect visitors�eyes from danger-ous ultravioletlight.

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t may sound incredible, but there is plant andanimal life in cold, windswept Antarctica. Wild-life is found mainly along the edges of the conti-nent, where ice and land meet the open sea. Eventhough the waters that surround Antarctica arethe coldest in the world, they are still muchwarmer than the land so food and animals can

survive.Antarctica�s cold waters are a great place for algae�

a kind of plant that grows in water. Algae are thebeginning of an important food chain. In the summer,the sun shines 24 hours a day, producing a thick soupof algae. But even where there�s pack ice coveringthe ocean, algae can still grow in cracks in the ice.

When the ice melts, all the algae end up in thesea. There they are eaten by long, shrimp-like creaturescalled krill. There are more krill than any other animalon Earth�billions and billions of them live in the ocean.

LLLLLIFEIFEIFEIFEIFELLLLLIFEIFEIFEIFEIFEKrill are eaten by bigger animals�fish, penguins and

seals. Krill are one of the most important food sourcesfor animals on Earth�especially those that live in theoceans around Antarctica. Even the biggest whales feedon krill, eating tons of the creatures every day!

Most of Antarctica�s wildlife depends upon the oceanfor life. Birds that fly, such as the skua and the giant pe-trel, and birds that don�t, such as the penguin, rely on theocean for support. So do seals and whales, Antarctica�smammal life.

As for land animals, there are some mites, which aremicroscopic bugs, and the wingless fly. (Flies on this con-tinent would never survive if they had wings, since it�s sowindy.)

Plants grow in only a few places. On the Antarctic Pen-insula, the point of land nearest to South America, visi-tors can find grasses or flowering plants. Moss and lichencan grow inland.

LEFT. These baby birdsare skuas. They arescavengers. (An adultskua flies over page 12.)RIGHT: Krill are 2½-inch-longshrimplike creatures. Theymake tasty dinners for whalesand seals.

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ABOVE: Some plant and animal life in Antarctica include 1.starfish, 2. a yawning leopard seal, 3. small plant life such asmoss and lichen, and 4. crabeater seals.

All the plants and animals that live in Antarcticahave adapted to living in cold and windy conditions. Someanimals, such as seals, whales and penguins have a thicklayer of fat called blubber. The blubber helps keep theirbody heat in. These animals have a heavy and closelypacked outer layer of fur or feathers to help keep themdry.

Even fish have adapted to the cold. They have anatural �anti-freeze� in their body fluids. The anti-freeze keeps the fish�s body from freezing in the

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28 degree water.The wildlife in Antarctica has evolved over millions of

years. The animals developed in a place where there areno natural enemies on land�and where people were notpresent until recently. So the animals aren�t afraid ofpeople, which once made them easy targets for hunters.At one time, the populations of many of the animals hadbeen greatly reduced because of this. Hunting for sealsand penguins and other marine life is now controlled byinternational treaties.


PPPPPENGUINSENGUINSENGUINSENGUINSENGUINSPPPPPENGUINSENGUINSENGUINSENGUINSENGUINSGentoo Chinstrap

Emperor penguins with partly grown chick.

Emperor penguin father incubating eggon his feet.

here are 18 different speciesof penguins and they all livesouth of the Equator.There are no penguins in

the Arctic, but four species of pen-guins live on the continent of Ant-arctica. Other penguin species live onislands around Antarctica, and one

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species lives as far north as theGalapagos Islands. Penguins, like allother birds, have feathers and layeggs. Their feathers are small andclosely spaced, to help keep themwarm. Penguins have wings, but theycannot fly. They use their wings forswimming underwater. Their stream-lined bodies and powerful wings al-low them to swim very fast. Gentoopenguins have been clocked swim-ming underwater at over 22 miles perhour.

The largest penguin is the Emperorpenguin. Emperor penguins hatchtheir chicks in the middle ofthe Antarctic winter, when it oftengets as cold as 77 degrees F belowzero with high and fierce winds.

Adelie penguins on pebble nest.

The female Emperor penguin laysonly a single egg, and the male incu-bates it. He must keep the egg at atemperature of 93 degrees for eightto nine weeks, without allowing it tocool off at all! He does this by hold-ing the egg between his legs on topof his webbed feet and covered bya warm fold of skin and feathers.The father Emperor penguin

can waddle around a bit while he isincubating the egg, but he can�t go inthe water and so he can�t eat�hemust live off the fat already stored inhis body. During this time, Emperorpenguin fathers often lose up to 25percent of their weight. Some wayto lose weight!

The other species of penguins inAntarctica make nests of pebbles onthe bare ground and hatch their eggsduring the short Antarctic summer.

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SSSSSEALSEALSEALSEALSEALSSSSSSEALSEALSEALSEALSEALSeals have dense fur and a thick layer of blubber (fat)underneath their skin to help hold in their body heat.Seals spend a lot of time in the water but come upon the ice or the shore to get a rest and to have their

babies. Seals are mammals, so they have live births and feedtheir babies milk. Mostly, they stay underwater for only a fewminutes at a time, but they can sometimes stay longer. Onespecies, the Weddell seal, has been timed for 73 minutes un-derwater!

There are four species of seals that live on Antarctica:crabeater seals, Weddell seals, leopard seals, and Ross seals.Fur seals and elephant seals are also found on the islandsaround Antarctica.

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sssssEALSEALSEALSEALSEALS are themost numerouslarge mammalsin the world.Not much isknown aboutthem becausethey live on the

drifting pack ice around Antarctica and are hard to study. How-ever, we do know that they don�t eat crabs! They eat krill (tinyshrimp-like sea creatures) that they filter out of the sea byforcing the seawater through holes in their lobed teeth.

WWWWWEDELLEDELLEDELLEDELLEDELL SEALSSEALSSEALSSEALSSEALS are very large, weighing about 1000 pounds asadults. They are found on the shores and on the ice connectedto the continent. These seals eat mainly fish�lots of fish!LLLLLEOPEOPEOPEOPEOPARDARDARDARDARD SEALSSEALSSEALSSEALSSEALS are also very large seals. They eat some krill,like crabeater seals, but they also eat young crabeater seals andpenguins.RRRRROSSOSSOSSOSSOSS SEALSSEALSSEALSSEALSSEALS are less common than the other seals in Antarc-tica. They eat squid and fish.

Crabeater seal

Leopard seal

Weddell seal

Leopard seal eating a penguin

Ross seal

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WWWWWHALESHALESHALESHALESHALESWWWWWHALESHALESHALESHALESHALESnother group of mammals lives in the coldbut food-rich oceans that surround Antarc-tica�whales.

Whales are the largest animals that have ever lived, andseveral species spend their summers feeding along thecoast of Antarctica. The Blue whale, which reaches 80feet long and weighs 85 tons, lives almost entirely on tinyshrimp-like sea creatures called krill that they eat by afilter system.

The whale takes large mouthfuls of water and thenforces it out through a thin fringed structure that hangs

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down from the top of its mouth. This structure acts as afilter and, after the water is forced out, the krill are left inthe whale�s mouth and can be swallowed.

Ten species of whales, including the Blue whale, arefilter feeders and eat this way. The other 65 whale speciesare toothed whales�and some have very large, sharp teethindeed! Orcas, sometimes called killer whales, are per-haps the best known of these. They eat larger sea crea-tures. Penguins and seals, for example, have very few en-emies on land, but in the ocean they have to be on thelookout for hungry killer whales!


The North Pole and the South Pole are both fascinating places. In some ways they seem the same, but they areactually very different from each other. Check out these differences. First look at the words. Arctic comes from arktos,the Greek word for bear. The NORTH POLE is in the Arctic, and there are polar bears in the Arctic. The SOUTHPOLE is in the Antarctic. Antarctic means the opposite of Arctic (think of the prefix anti). And in Antarctic there areno polar bears.

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QUIZQUIZQUIZQUIZQUIZ1. A large land continent that is covered with ice. [ ] [ ] [ ]2. You can find polar bears there. [ ] [ ] [ ]3. It is light for six months. [ ] [ ] [ ]4. The ice is thousands of feet thick. [ ] [ ] [ ]5. There are mountains buried beneath the ice. [ ] [ ] [ ]6. You might find penguins there. [ ] [ ] [ ]7. It is dark for six months. [ ] [ ] [ ]8. There is water under nearly all the ice. [ ] [ ] [ ]

Antarctica Arctic Both

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Snow in Antarctica is often packed hard and carvedinto unusual shapes by the wind.

Antarctica (in white) is larger than the United Statesof America (in green). The continent gets even largerin the Antarctic winter, when very thick ice forms onthe oceans around it.

Forty thousand Adeli penguins live in this busy colony atCape Bird. The total penguin population of Antarctica isover 180 million! Food-rich waters and a lack of landenemies support these creatures in their icy home.

ntarctica is as far as you can get from theworld�s factories, cars, trucks and cities. It�s

the cleanest place on Earth!But even in Antarctica, tiny amounts of pollution, like

carbon dioxide (C02), lead and PCBs, have been detectedby scientists� specialized equipment.

When the rest of the world cleans up some of itspollution, scientists will be able to see the results inAntarctica. Less pollution will arrive from those places,so even Antarctica will be cleaner than it is today.Measuring pollution there is valuable because it helps keeptrack of pollution all over the world.

There�s another kind of pollution right in Antarcticaitself. Garbage. Early Antarctic research teams couldn�t

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haul away all their stuff�just staying alive was hard workin those days! So they left it there. Today, people are pick-ing up trash that was left behind years ago.

But now that more and more people get to Antarctica,there�s an even greater chance that visitors could polluteit. So both tourists and researchers must be very carefulto keep the continent from getting dirty.

The Antarctica Treaty has rules to prevent pollution.And there are rules against disturbing the plants and ani-mals, too. Antarctica�s beautiful landscape and wonderfulcreatures are part of a unique and delicate system. Ifvisitors are careful not to disturb that system, we canenjoy its treasures forever.

McMurdo is Antarctica�s largest research station. About1,200 people work there in summertime�some even stayyear-round. People at McMurdo are very careful aboutpollution.

Pollution might start anywhere�maybe from car exhaustin North America, a smokestack in Europe, or from alocomotive in Asia. Then it travels to Antarctica throughthe atmosphere and the ocean. It takes a long time forpollutants to drift all the way to Antarctica, and by the timethey get there, they have all mixed together. So it�s hard totell where they came from.

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LEFT: Mt. Erebus is an active volcano inAntarctica. It�s 12,444 feet high.ABOVE: Ice streams form when someice melts and the ice above it startssliding downhill.

team, red-hot lava, and ash in Antarctica? Yes,recently active volcanoes were discovered un-der the ice! The lava and steam melt some ofthe ice. That makes some of the remaining ice

start to slide. This is called an ice stream.If these volcanoes became much more active, giant

pieces of ice could slide off Antarctica. There is so muchice in Antarctica that if many large piecesever do slide off, the ocean level wouldrise and the world�s climate would change.

SSSSSSSSSSpretty good since the average American city recycles onlyabout 17 percent of its garbage. The garbage that can�tbe recycled is sent back to the United States for disposal.Recycling is important in Antarctica since things do notbreak down, rust, or rot because of the cold. Even foodand supplies left by explorers in 1911 are still edible. Af-ter all, they�re in nature�s deep freeze.

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The southernmost city in the worldis McMurdo, in Antarctica. McMurdois a research base built on bare landon Ross Island. It�s run by the UnitedStates, and more than 1,200 peoplefrom many different countries spendthe summer there. McMurdo haspower lines, water pipes, telephonesystems, stores, clubs, and even afirehouse. Its residents keep Antarc-tica clean. They recycle 70 percentof the garbage they generate. That�s

Garbage from U.S.stations and camps allover Antarctica iscollected at McMurdo.Once a year a big shipcarries the waste toWashington state forrecycling or disposal.

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ring the summer near theSouth Pole, if you don�t goto sleep until it gets darkyou�ll be pretty pooped,

because daylight lasts for six months!And when it�s summer at the SouthPole, it�s winter at the North Pole,and the North Pole is dark for sixmonths! How can that be?

As the Earth moves around thesun, it follows a path called its orbit.It takes a year for the Earth to goaround the sun once. The Earth istilted so that at one side of the orbitthe South Pole is pointing partlytoward the sun; this is summer in theSouthern Hemisphere. You cansee in the picture that in this posi-

DDDDDDDDDD LLLLLONGONGONGONGONG D D D D DAAAAAYSYSYSYSYS D D D D DEMOEMOEMOEMOEMOYou can set up a demonstrationto see how this works. You�ll needa slide projector or a powerfulflashlight, a globe, two stick-ondots, and a friend. Set the flash-light up on a table. Put a dot onthe place you live and one on theSouth Pole. Have a friend hold theglobe on an angle in the center ofthe flashlight�s beam as in theillustration. Imagine it is Decem-ber 21 or 27, the first day ofwinter in the United States (alsocalled the winter solstice). Slowlyspin the globe from west to eastthe way the Earth spins. Noticethat Antarctica remains light allday and the Arctic remains darkall day. What happens to thecountries in between?

Quiz Answers from page 16: 1. Anatarctic 2. Arctic 3. Both 4. Antarctic 5. Antarctic 6. Antarctic 7. Both 8. Artic

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tion the North Pole does not get anylight; this is winter in the Northernhemisphere. Then, at the oppositeside of the orbit, the North Polepoints partly toward the sun and theSouth Pole away from the sun, whichmakes it summer in the NorthernHemisphere and winter in the South-ern.

While all this is happening, theEarth also spins around once everytwenty-four hours, creating day andnight for most of the planet. How-ever, the light from the sun can�treach the Pole that faces farthest awayfrom the sun so it�s dark there all day,while the Pole closest to the sun getssunlight twenty-four hours a day.


ost of the people who visited Antarctica inthe early days were explorers. Today, scien-tists from countries around the globe cometo study what some people call �the biggest

laboratory in the world.� Here's a look at some of thetypes of scientists who visit Antarctica-and what they do.

Biologists study living things. They come to thisfrozen continent to find out how animals survive in the

MMMMMMMMMMAntarctica is a good place tostudy Earth�s atmosphere.Balloons send back informa-tion about weather conditionsand Earth�s ozone layer.

Antarctica is a frontier that scientists are mapping,surveying and studying.

harsh, cold climate of Antarctica. Biologists study largeanimals and small ones, too�from leopard seals and killerwhales to rock mites and wingless flies, from anti-freezein fish, to blubber in penguins, from animal navigation toanimal reproduction. (Think about baby penguins andseals being exposed to subfreezing temperatures momentsafter birth!)

Some biologists have found tiny plant-like organismsgrowing inside rocks. The plants get enough sunlight togrow, but are protected from the harsh climate by

growing below the rock�s surface!Biologists go scuba diving in fresh water lakes that are

covered with 10 to 20 feet of ice. During the summer-time, the sun heats these lakes and temperatures go up tothe 70s. This makes it possible for algae, a type of waterplant, to grow there.

UNDER THE SEA

Marine biologists scuba dive beneath the frozenoceans of Antarctica, looking for jellyfish and otherforms of life. They are trying to figure out how theseanimals can live in water that would normally freezemost creatures. Scientists have discovered that fish inAntarctica have a kind of anti-freeze in their bodies tokeep them from freezing.

Paleontologists study fossils. In Antarctica, they�vediscovered lots of fossils such as tree ferns and the re-mains of Lystrosaurus (an early reptile). These fossilsare clues that Antarctica wasn�t always cold and coveredwith ice. Some 200 million years ago when dinosaurs

SSSSSCIENCECIENCECIENCECIENCECIENCESSSSSCIENCECIENCECIENCECIENCECIENCE

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roamed the Earth, they were in Antarctica, too!Geologists are scientists who study rocks as clues to

the history of the Earth. In Antarctica, geologists notonly study rocks, but they study how ice shaped andmoved the rocks, as well. Their work tells them a lot aboutthe history of Antarctica and how it�s related to the restof the world.

For instance, many of the rocks found in Antarcticaare found in other places, like Africa, Australia, and In-dia. This means that millions of years ago Antarctica wasconnected to other land masses. And it wasn�t always atthe bottom of the world!

MineralsMineralsMineralsMineralsMineralsGeologists have also discovered many minerals and ores

in Antarctica. They�ve found small amounts of silver, cop-per, gold and uranium, and larger amounts of coal andiron here. There are some signs that natural gas and pe-troleum may also be buried beneath the ice, snow, landand oceans of Antarctica.

Geologists use radar and sonar to find out what theland looks like beneath all the ice and snow. They�ve dis-covered whole mountain ranges that are covered in ice.And they�ve even discovered that Antarctica is made upof two big pieces of land�one east and one west�con-nected by a thick layer of ice.

Glaciologists are geologists who study ice. They drilldeep holes into the thick layer of ice that covers Antarc-tica. The samples of ice taken from these holes give sci-entists lots of information about the past climate ofAntarctica and the Earth.

The samples, or cores, are like tree rings. Each year�s�growth� of ice can be measured. It shows just how warmor cold the year was. So, by looking back through mil-lions

A diver wearing extra-warm gear goes below the surface tostudy underwater life.

Drilling into theice helps scien-tists learn moreabout Earth�s past.

of years of ice, scientists can figure out how Earth�s cli-mate has changed.

Ice also holds clues about the air that surrounds theEarth. Tiny air bubbles are trapped in the ice. Thesebubbles show what was in the air thousands of years agoand show how the various gases that make up the atmo-sphere have changed since then.

The Ozone ZoneThe Ozone ZoneThe Ozone ZoneThe Ozone ZoneThe Ozone ZonePhysicists come to Antarctica to study things such as

air and the southern magnetic pole. They�ve been study-ing a hole in a thin layer of ozone 7 to 15 miles aboveEarth. The ozone layer protects the Earth from harmfulradiation from the sun. Natural and human-made chemi-cals attack ozone and turn it into another gas, oxygen,that gives no protection.

Astronomers study stars and other heavenly bodies in-cluding the sun. In summer, they can track the sun fordays at a time because it stays up 74 hours a day! Someastronomers come to Antarctica to collect meteorites, littlepieces of rock that come from space. Some meteoritesare from the moon, and a few seem to have come fromMars! No one is sure how the Martian meteorites got here.

Scientists are making discoveries all the time about Ant-arctica and the Earth. They come from all over the worldto work here. There�s lots of international cooperation asscientists explore different things in a very cold place.

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Ozone in the air around the world acts as a sunscreen, letting in visible light and stopping most of the dangerous ultra-violet light.

f you stay in the bright sun for too long, you willbecome sunburned. Mixed in with the light fromthe sun that lets you see things are several kinds oflight that you can�t see. One of these kinds of light

is called ultra-violet light, and this is what causes sun-burn. Ultraviolet light, or UV light, can cause even worsethings. It can cause skin cancer in people, andover-exposure can also kill other animals and plants, par-ticularly in the world�s oceans.

IIIIIIIIIINormally most of the UV light from the sun is stopped

from reaching the Earth by a layer of ozone that sur-rounds the Earth high up in the sky and acts as a naturalsun screen. Ozone is a special kind of oxygen (we breatheanother kind of oxygen). In the 1970s, scientists begannoticing that the protective layer of ozone that was overAntarctica was thinning, and it has become thinner andthinner in the years since then, creating what some call a�hole� in the ozone layer. This hole was caused by

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OOOOOZONEZONEZONEZONEZONEOOOOOZONEZONEZONEZONEZONESCREEN FOR THE EARTH


This computer-generated picture shows the ozone hole overAntarctica. The ozone gets thicker as shown by the differentcolors moving away from the center.

industrial chemicals such as chloroflurocarbons, or CFCs,that got into the air and traveled to Antarctica. Thesechemicals were once used in refrigerators and other ma-chines. CFCs, along with other chemicals used in indus-try and agriculture, escaped into the atmosphere andcaused the hole in the Antarctic ozone layer when theyattached to beautiful clouds found mainly over Antarc-tica that are called polar stratospheric clouds. Scientistsnow carefully watch what is going on with the ozone layerto discover any new problems early. The hole is mainlyover Antarctica, but CFCs are reducing the ozone layersomewhat all over the world.

Ozone, the Earth�s natural sunscreen, is very impor-tant to all of us. Even though CFCs are not made any-more, the �hole� in the ozone layer is still very large andit may take many years for it to close up and becomenormal again�if it ever does. We can see from this thatpollution can have far-reaching affects and can cause prob-lems that are hard to see in the beginning. Other chemi-cals in the air can also effect the ozone layer and need tobe monitored. We need to take care of our home, theEarth. Antarctica is one place that provides a good labo-ratory for monitoring the health of the Earth.

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a prism, the different colors sepa-rate. You will see these as reds,greens, blues, and so forth. Oneach end of the visible group oflight (those you can see) arewavelengths that you cannot see.The light called ultra-violet, or UVlight, is one that cannot be seenby people, and it is the one thatcan give us sunburn or worse.This is why it is important to becareful about too much exposureto the sun without protection.

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On the sea ice at McMurdo Sound, Eagle Scout Scot Duncan tags aseal pup while Scot�s companion keeps its mother busy. Scot workedclosely with Weddell seals during his stay. Tagging helps researcherslearn about�and keep track of�the seals. The first Boy Scout to visitAntarctica was Paul Siple. He joined Admiral Byrd�s historic expedi-tion in 1928.

ho will be the Antarcticscientists of tomorrow?One of them could be

you! If you�d like to go to Antarcticasomeday, the time to get started isnow. Fewer than 100,000 people haveever been there, and there�s lots ofcompetition over who gets to go.

For one thing, Antarctica is veryexpensive to get to. That�s becauseit�s so far away. Besides that, the landand climate are very harsh, whichmakes many things we take forgranted very expensive. For example,we all need water, right? Well, just toget a glass of drinking water in Ant-arctica, people have to use costly

WWWWWWWWWW technology. In fact, a glass of watercosts 15 times more in Antarcticathan in the United States.

First, only salty sea water is avail-able because everything else is fro-zen. It must be taken to a plant whereexpensive fuel runs machines that getthe salt out. Specially insulated pipestransport water to keep it from freez-ing.

And that�s only water! There�s alsofood, equipment and lots of otherstuff that must be brought from faraway. Because it�s so expensive, tripsare planned carefully, long in advance.Only top experts and the best work-ers are chosen to go.

There are things you can do to getready. One is to stay healthy so you�llbe fit for Antarctica�s tough climate.And studying math and sciencecourses can be a big help. Some or-ganizations and groups help by giv-ing money to Antarctic scientists.

Scientists also take research assis-tants to help in Antarctica. The as-sistants are often top math and sci-ence students at universities whereAntarctic scientists do research. Toget there and pay for the stay, theassistants can sometimes get moneyfrom the National Science Founda-tion (NSF) and other agencies.

Both Girl Scouts and Boy Scoutscan try for the chance to spend a fewmonths there. Competition is verystiff. However, the prize is aonce-in-a-lifetime opportunity.

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RIGHT: �It really wanted to go!� said Girl ScoutJulie Hagelin of that big yellow weather balloon.Balloons carry lots of high tech equipment togather information about the air above Antarctica.Julie held on to this one until the exact momentwhen all its equipment was ready to start.ABOVE: Then she monitored it from insideMcMurdo station, measuring things like windsand temperature. �Science is true discovery, andAntarctica is the major frontier for us on Earth,�said Julie.

The winner visits several researchprojects for about a week each. Forexample, scouts have tagged seals,observed penguins and collected 400-million-year-old fossils.

NSF also has a pretty amazing pro-gram. Their �Young Scholars� get todo specialized field research in

Antarctica. Catherine Anne Blish, 18,studied algae that live in sea ice, andKevin Engle, also 18, did gamma rayastronomy!

Lots of people who aren�t scien-tists go to Antarctica, too. After spe-cial training, high school graduatescan find jobs flying aircraft, fixing or

driving special land vehicles, workingin research labs and doing many otherimportant tasks to help out. TheAntarctic environment is so challeng-ing that lots of people are needed tosupport the research teams.

The competition is stiff, and it�s alot of hard work. So if you want togo to Antarctica, start working now.Someday you could be an Antarcticexpert!

Contact these organizations directlyto find out more about Antarctic sci-ence opportunities for young people:Girl Scouts of the U.S.A. in NewYork, NY; Boy Scouts of America inIrving, TX; and the National ScienceFoundation in Arlington, VA. Andgood luck!

Robin Moyle journeyedsouth for the first GirlScouts of the U.S.A. trekto �the bottom of theworld� in 1985. One ofher new friends was thissled dog. Today, newrules keep all non-nativeanimals out of Antarc-tica, including sleddogs.

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WWWWWWWWWWho discovered Antarc-tica? The answer tothat question isn�t soeasy. After all, Antarc-

tica is far from where most peoplelive. Its oceans are ice-filled and dan-gerous. So Antarctica was not discov-ered until modern times.

In 1774, the famous explorer Cap-tain Cook was the first person to sailinto Antarctic waters. Another En-glishman, William Smith, discoveredthe South Shetland Islands in 1819.

But it was an American, CaptainNathaniel Palmer, who may havebeen the first person to actually sightAntarctica, in November 1820.

Two Englishmen, Captains EdwardBransfield and John Biscoe alsosighted Antarctic land in 1821 and

Robert Scott died on his way backfrom the South Pole.

1830. From then on,visits by explor-ers and whalers became more fre-quent.

But the sea ice made landing on thecontinent difficult. In 1821, CaptainJohn Davis claimed to have set footon Antarctica itself. Another 74 yearswere to pass before anyone elselanded there.

Exploration to that frozen worldcontinued, however. In 1838, CharlesWilkes, an American, led an expedi-tion that explored much of the Ant-arctic coast.

At the same time, DumontD�Urville, from France, spent justover three years exploring much ofthe same part of the coast. D�Urvillewas the first to write about his trip�32 books in all!

Adrien de Gerlache, an explorerfrom Belgium, led a group that spentthe winter in Antarctica. (�They livedon a boat frozen in the sea ice.) Hedid this from 1897 to 1899.

Ernest Shackleton got within 97 milesof the South Pole.

The first person to winter on landwas Carsten Borchgrevink. He was aNorwegian who was part of a Brit-ish team. In 1899, he and three sci-entists spent an entire winter on thecontinent.

Still, by the beginning of the 20thcentury, no one had gone very farinland. And no one had gone to theSouth Pole itself�the very bottomof the world.

Several explorers became key play-ers in the race for the South Pole.They were Ernest Shackleton andRobert Scott of England, and RoaldAmundsen of Norway. From 1906to 1922, these three men led variousexpeditions to try to reach the Pole.All the expeditions for the South Polestarted from base camps on the RossIce Shelf or on Ross Island about 800miles from the Pole.Roald Amundsen, the first to reach

the South Pole.

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Scott led the first expedition southin 1902, but he didn�t get too far. In1906, he led another trip, but he stilldidn�t make it to the Pole.

In 1908, Ernest Shackleton gotwithin 97 miles of the South Pole.But he was forced to turn back be-cause he was running out of food.He and his men walked 700 milesback to where they started.

Even though he hadn�t made it allthe way to the Pole, Shackleton re-turned to England a hero.

On October 19, 1911, RoaldAmundsen left his base camp at theBay of Whales with four companionsand his dogsleds for a dash to thebottom of the world.

Scott and his team left two weekslater from Ross Island.

Amundsen beat Scott to the South

The lines show the routes that each ofthe explorers took on their way to theSouth Pole. Scott and Amundsenarrived, but Shackleton had to turnhack. Above the map are U.S. postagestamps which honor other explorersto Antarctica.

Pole. He got there on December 14,1911. Scott�s team finally made it tothe South Pole too, about three weeksafter Amundsen. But they were notin good shape. They had not takenenough supplies for five people.

Scott and his men struggled backthrough bad weather and with rap-idly disappearing supplies. Hungryand sick, they froze to death out onthe ice. Scott and his men died be-cause they were poorly prepared forthe dangers of polar travel.

Fifteen years later, Admiral Rich-ard E. Byrd, an American, began the

modern era of polar exploration. Heis best known for having flown overthe North and South Poles. But healso headed four U.S. expeditions toAntarctica that led to a long-termscientific presence there. His teamsdiscovered many mountains andmountain ranges, glaciers and iceshelves.

During the 1950s and 60s, scien-tists from many countries set up per-manent bases to study Antarctica.Since then, the old explorers havebeen replaced by scientists who sharetheir sense of adventure and discov-ery.

Today, the United States has thelargest scientific presence on Antarc-tica, with more than 2,000 peoplecoming to the continent each sum-mer for research.

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AAAAAAAAAA now Africa, South America, India andAustralia.

Scientists call this giant continentGondwanaland. Scientists think

GGGGGONDONDONDONDONDWWWWWANALANALANALANALANAL ANDANDANDANDANDGGGGGONDONDONDONDONDWWWWWANALANALANALANALANAL ANDANDANDANDANDthat about 180 million years ago,Gondwanaland started to breakapart. It may have taken Antarcticamany millions of years to move toits present position.

Scientists have discovered the fos-sil remains of plants and animals inAntarctica, including ferns, the rep-tile Lystrosaurus, a small mammal andeven a 25-foot-long dinosaur! Fromthis and other evidence, scientistsknow that Antarctica hasn�t alwaysbeen cold. In fact, the climate wasonce subtropical.

The arrows show how millions ofyears ago, giant chunks of landbroke off from Africa and eventuallydrifted to their present positions.

ntarctica hasn�t alwaysbeen by itself at the bot-tom of the world. It wasonce connected to what is

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ce is ice, right? Wrong! In Ant-arctica, ice comes in manyforms. After all, Antarcticahas 90 percent of the world�s

ice, and that�s 70 percent of theworld�s fresh water. Here�s a look atAntarctic ice.

Ice sheets are formed by fallingsnow, so they are made of fresh wa-ter. The sheets cover most ofAntarctica�s land.

Glaciers and Ice Streams are actu-ally frozen rivers of ice that come

IIIIIIIIIIfrom the ice sheets. They move slowlytowards the sea.

Ice shelves are made of glacier icethat is attached to the land. But theshelves are actually floating on the sur-face of the sea. Ice shelves can be hun-dreds of feet thick. The Ross Ice Shelfis as big as France.

Icebergs are glacier ice that has bro-ken loose from Antarctica. Bergs driftnorth to warmer seas where they melt.

Sea ice is frozen sea water. It almostnever gets thicker than about 10 feet.

A S L I C E O F I C EA S L I C E O F I C E

ILLUSTR

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S © PETER

SPACEK

Anarctica is not owned or ruled by anyone country. Forty-two nations havesigned a treaty which keeps all humanactivity there dedicated to peaceful

purposes, including scientific research.Originally, 12 nations signed the treaty

when it was made in 1959. You can seetheir flags on this page!

There are many types of sea ice. �Fastice� is sea ice attached to the shore.�Pack ice� is sea ice that has brokeninto pieces. �Pancake ice� are brokensea ice pieces that have bumped intoeach other. They look like pancakes.

Every year, new sea ice freezes,making an area of sea ice equal to8 million square miles�evenbigger than Antarctica itself. In sum-mer, all but 1 million square milesmelts away.

Antarctic A Guide -Kids

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