Johnson: Study calls for citizen scientists

You’ve got to admit, it’s fun when the baking soda and vinegar aggressively bubble up from a homemade volcano, or when the shell of an egg soaked in vinegar disappears after a few days in the fridge.

Whether in a classroom or with the guidance of parents, all the science experiments you get to do are part of the fun during the learning years — magnet motors, tornadoes in recycled soda bottles, homemade goo and testing household liquids with red cabbage litmus solution are just some of the creative ways youngsters get to explore the world and see how and why things work.

In search of ponies

Parenting offers a lucky second opportunity to explore the fun side of science with the kiddos and of course teachers and those that go into science fields get plenty of chances to explore why things do what they do.

Sure, there are those instances of forgetting a container of take-out in the fridge for a couple of months or leaving a load of wet clothes in the washer too long, but after learning the basics, most everybody goes on to live a science-less life. It’s OK really, because not everybody is meant to be a scientist. After all, there’s a lot of education and writing and calculating and other not-as-fun things that go along with doing it professionally.

Luckily, there are aspects to science that do not require the technical and more tedious stuff, and the professionals are more and more willing (actually they’re practically begging) to share those tasks with non-science folks.

Varying in complexity and subject matter, citizen science opportunities now crop up on a regular basis, allowing ordinary folks to play along and learn more about the world in the process.

Flood and weather observations, plant activity, insect, bee and bird counts, reptile, bird and butterfly migrations, astronomy projects — take your pick, because there’s probably a citizen science project for it.

Animal observations are one of the most natural subjects for citizen science because animals provide enormous insight into environmental changes and participants can contribute information of a global magnitude.

Then again, there are those places on the globe where people just don’t go but, as luck would have it, technology has offered a solution, and this year, one of the “cooler” citizen science projects involves observing Antarctic penguins.

Yes, that’s penguins in the Antarctic — conducted from a comfortable, warm distance that literally requires only as many clicks as one is willing to invest.

Penguin Lifelines, penguinelifelines.org, is a collaborative, international effort between researchers from seven universities attempting to understand the reasons for declining penguin numbers by analyzing photographs.

The problem is, they have too many photographs — remote camera stations throughout the Antarctic have taken hundreds of thousands of photos already, with new ones being added daily — to analyze them without help.

The task, for citizen scientists therefore, is to view photos online and mark the penguins, eggs and young chicks they see by species — and group effort is definitely needed when some photos contain hundreds of penguins huddled on a rocky shore.

The data from the public input will be used to record penguin activity near the cameras and will also help train new computer software to analyze the photographs to hopefully automate the process in the future, according to Penguin Lifelines.

Finding and participating in citizen science, whether looking for something to do with the kids, a science or nature enthusiast, or just curious, means leaving a mark on a penguin from thousands of miles away is one of many ways an individual can leave a mark on the world.

Sharna Johnson is a writer who is always searching for ponies. You can reach her at:

[email protected].