Geocaching Lab

1,236.44 ft path

My first geocaching lab experience was on Tuesday, February 1 and shown above is the path around the Willet Science Center and Tarver library where the 8 containers were found.  I place a yellow marker at each coordinate in Google Earth and put the descriptions of the bottle and what was inside of each like so:

• #1: Black metal container with rolled piece of paper inside
• #2: Clear container with white lid, black eyed peas inside
• #3: Red metal container with rolled paper
• #4: Rx bottle, tabasco sauce inside
• #5: Rx bottle, soda can tabs
• #6: Clear bottle, chalk 
• #7: Clear bottle, battery 
• #8: Rx bottle, magnets and little toy car

Geocaching is similar to scavenger hunts but with GPS coordinates and a GPS device.  The idea is to locate hidden containers that have been hidden with your GPS device using provided coordinates on the geocaching site or elsewhere and to record what has been found for your records.  Then you are supposed to put the container back exactly where you found it.  On the official global website, http://www.geocaching.com/, they remind you that if you take what is inside the container you located, to put another object of equal or lesser value into the container. 

GPS and mapping can be used for environmental research in many ways.  From comparing amount of rainfall from one county to the next to elevation levels of Mt. Kilimanjaro; mapping has proven to be a great advantage in new tools and advances in environmental technology and scientific information gained.  GPS is used in so many ways as well, from fun geocaching to installation in airplanes that can capture information on the Earth and digitally process it to be analyzed quickly.  This can be used to forecast earthquake before they occur and analyze animal populations from the air.