SFX second-graders learn about the world’s coldest continent from multi-time Antarctica traveler
Former University of Alabama Birmingham (UAB) employee and lay scientist James Lowery spoke to Ms. Marie Hayes’s second-grade class on Tuesday about his multiple trips to Antarctica.
Lowery is the grandfather of St. Francis Xavier (SFX) Catholic School seventh-grader Hewes Hendrick.
To get to Antarctica, Lowery had to fly to the southernmost tip of South America and travel by boat to some of the most treacherous waters in the world to reach the Antarctic shore.
He explained that the Southern Ocean, which surrounds Antarctica, is subject to harsh conditions because there is no landmass blocking the winds and currents on the stretch of ocean between Antarctica and other continents such as Australia, Africa and South America.
Lowery showed the second graders pictures and videos from his trips. These included icebergs, geological structures and wildlife. Though Antarctica’s cold climate would make it challenging for many animals to survive there, the continent is home to over 1,000 species.
Ms. Hayes’s second graders were most excited to learn about the penguins. Lowery showed them a picture of a king penguin colony, which included around 500,000 penguins all in one place. He said penguins congregate on land to breed, but spend most of their lives in the water.
“On one of my trips, they calculated how many penguins we had seen based on the colonies we visited,” Lowery said. “It was 1.6 million penguins that I saw on just one of my trips.”
To demonstrate the size of different kinds of penguins, Lowery brought with him two blow-up model penguins. The largest was taller than some of the children. He also wore one of his jackets from the expedition.
The average temperature in Antarctica is around -71 degrees Fahrenheit, but average temperatures in certain parts of the continent can be about 34 degrees Fahrenheit in the summer months.
“The problem in Antarctica - one of the problems - is there is a lot of land, and the wind has little ice pieces in it, so even if it’s not snowing, it still is very icy,” he explained.
Students also learned about whales, seals, flying birds and general facts about the continent itself.
“[Antarctica] is larger than the United States combined and it’s sunnier than California but it’s colder than the freezing compartment in your refrigerator at home,” Lowery said. “… It’s classified as a desert because it’s got just a little bit of precipitation and what snow does fall there generally stays where it collects over periods of years. It’s higher than the mountains of Switzerland … It’s emptier than the Sahara desert.”
“So it is the windiest, coldest, driest, cleanest, lightest, loneliness and quietest place on earth,” he continued. “The only noise there is the noise we bring on the ship or the noise that the animals or the noise of the water.”
St. Francis Xavier Catholic School is an accredited classical Catholic PreK-8 school in Birmingham’s Crestline neighborhood that uses the time-tested Catholic Intellectual Tradition to form students in virtue through the pursuit of academic excellence and service toward God and neighbor.
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