Program Activities
Voyage activities are based on informal science education models. They are voluntary, self-directed and intended to be so interesting that students will remember them and make them the basis of life-long learning activities. Most of the learning activities are based around maritime themes. Students are immersed in technology and the study of navigation from a historical perspective that shows how technology has evolved into modern day techniques as well as scientific differences and similarites between the two.
In Year One of the project activities will center on the maritime Past. In the boat building workshop students build 26 foot long boats that will become a part of the USS Constellation collection. Using historic tools and simple machines they learn how to caulk, understand the technologies of mechanical advantage and the scientific principles behind buoyancy. In the Bernstein Digital Arts Lab, students will apply what they have learned through hands-on experiences to research topics of their own interest.
In Year Two, Voyage participants focus on the Present. They will continue boat building activities and study forms of present-day navigation and air travel. Students will investigate modern environmental sciences and study the interrelationships of navigation and shipping and the health of the Chesapeake Bay. In their continuing study of navigable transportation vessels, students will study the 20th century advances that led to air travel, and will build a remote-controlled model dirigible that will be used to perform navigation experiments. Voyage students will continue working at Masonville where they explore water quality testing, soil testing and create oyster beds, and assist in farming turtles for release into the Chesapeake Bay.
In Year Three, Voyage participants will focus on the Future. Students will focus on the future of navigation using modern and impending shipping technologies. Students will continue to work with the Maryland Pilot’s Association to study the alternatives that are being researched and in some cases already implemented for the future of shipping. New materials that are being used to construct boats will also be studied, as well as different boat designs to accommodate new materials and technologies.