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email:
bo_smith@bellsouth.net
Last Updated: January 16th, 2011 |
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email:
bo_smith@bellsouth.net
Last Updated: January 16th, 2011 |
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Earth Systems and Space Science Educational Services |
I have spent the last five years conducting research into the geology and mining history of the Spruce Pine Pegmatite Mining District located in Avery, Mitchell, and Yancey counties in western North Carolina in the Blue Ridge Mountains. I have been working on a book on the subject for a couple of years now intended for tourists or local residents who are interested in doing some "mining" of actual mines rather than just the "tourist mining" experience. I found while conducting the research for this project that the culture and history of the area had to be a major part of the book effort so I have concentrated my time lately in meeting as many of the old miners and their families as possible and investigating as many of the old mines as I could before continuing work on the actual writing. This past summer, I lead tours of the Martin Feldspar Mine for "Rock Mine Tours" which is owned by nearby neighbor and new friend, Lud Leiner. I enjoyed leading these tours for school groups and for individual families so much that I have decided to start my own mine tours business. I have established a website and plan to conduct tours from the Memorial Day weekend through the Labor Day weekend this summer (2011).
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It seems that I have been involved in teaching in one form or another throughout both my military and public school careers. As a flight instructor in the Navy and Air Force and in almost every aspect of my Navy experience, training and modeling were essesntial factors in learning success. I taught Earth/Space Science, Oceanography, and Environmental Science during my sixteen year career in public school teaching. After my experience as an Earth Science Course Lab Instructor at UNF, I developed and taught Earth/Space Science Honors in several forms for the last ten years at Terry Parker; initially as a high level fourth science course, and for my last four years of teaching as part of Terry Parker's innovative Freshman Honors Academy. I particularly enjoyed participating an extension activities such as:
Project GEO- Prioject
GEO was a collaboration between myself and Dr. Nick Hudyma, a professor
of geotechnical engineering at the University of North Florida (UNF). This
program was intended to enable a highly motivated group of my students
interested in a career in science or engineering to get a taste of pure
science research or solving an engineering related problem in a university
lab setting.
Click on the
Project GEO website for more information.
From May 2005 until May 2006, I worked as an Aerospace Aviation Mentor (AEM) for the Florida Space Research Institute (FSRI), I mentored teachers, gave presentations, and conducted teacher workshops in northeast Florida. During that period, I developed a one day workshop on NASA's space exploration initiative "The Earth, Moon, Mars, and Beyond" which includes several lunar and mars planetary geology hands on activities. For more infiormation check out my Exploring Moon and Mars Geology website. During this period, I developed several Earth/Space Science classrom activities; see Activities.
From 1999 through May 31st, 2005, I was the the Program Manager and Instructor for the 'Protein Crystals in Space in Florida Schools' Program. This program was a grant project funded by the Florida Space Grant Consortium (FSGC). During this program, we flew over 100 teacher and student made protein crystallization payload samples via three space shuttle launches to the International Space Station (ISS). The website for this exciting program is: http://florida-protein-crystals-in-space.org. Unfortunately, the grant funding was discontinued by FSGC because we lost our payload flight opportunity due to a change in priorities by NASA for ISS missions following the space shuttle Columbia tragedy. However, we were fortunate to get one additional opportunity in 2008. With funding from the Alabama Space Grant Consortium and private sources we were able to conduct student workshops in Jacksonville, Fleming Island, and Gainesville and the take selected students to Huntsville, Alabama for two workshops (April and June , 2008). Lysozyme protein samples produced in the Huntsville workshops were flown by a Soyuz rocket from the Cosmodrome to the Space Station in October 2008.
I was a participant in the Florida Explores' Program from 1993 until 2006. Florida Explores' was a weather satellite educational outreach program sponsored by Dr. Paul Ruscher of the Department of Meterology at Florida State University (FSU). As a Florida Explores' teacher, I operated a real time weather satellite ground station in my high school classroom and my students created and maintained the Terry Parker Weather Center Website. Although the FSU Florida Explores' Program is no longer funded, many of the Florida Explores' teachers have continued to network in various educational activities with the support of Dr. Ruscher at FSU.
Terry Parker Website and Internet Research Class: My Florida Explores' experience lead to the creation of a small class that exisetd for several years. Students in this class conducted research in various fields using the internet which resulted in the development of several websites such as the Terry Parker Space Science Website. This class created and and was responsible for maintenance of the Terry Parker High School Website until the class was disbanded due to class size and funding contraints.
Science Fair Projects: I superivised several highly motivated students in Science Fair Projects. Descriptions and websites for some of these projects are provided below:
Determining the Composition of Rocks Using Reflectance Spectrometry
The Effect of Varying pH in the Crystallization of Lysozyme
Thaumatin
Crystallization in a Magnetic Field
Presentations: In addition to numerous prsentations at Florida Association of Science Teacher's annual conferences, here are some of my state and national level professional presentations:
National
Science Teachers Association Annual Meeting - April, 2000, Orlando,
Florida
Super
Computer 98 Conference -November, 1998, Orlando, Florida
Florida
Educational Technology Conference (FETC 98) -March, 1998, Orlando
Super
Computer 97 Conference -November, 1997, San Jose, California
North
Florida Heavy Mineral Mining: I have lived in Jacksonville
on and off since 1965. During that period, I noticed on many occasions
that the gray colored sand was the result of dark colored miinerals mixed
in with the quartz. I also noticed that in some areas of the beach
the darker minerals are concentrated due to dissimilar current flow.
Examination of the sand under the microscope revealed that the sand consisted
of mostly quartz particles; mostly colorless and milky but with some amethyst
and citrine. There were also red particles, possibly garnet and ruby
and smaller particles of very dark, mostly opaque, particles. I learned
that the beach sands were mined in Ponte Vedre Beach in the 40s.
Street names in the vicinity of the exclusive Ponte Vedra Inn and Club
are named after heavy minerals; Rutile Place, Ilmenite Court etc.
During 2003, I became interested in increasing my reseach effort
and I discovered that "heavy minerals" were being actively mined in northeast
Florida. I visited the Dupont mining and processing locations near
Starke, Florida and the ILUKA mining and processing locations south of
Green Cove Springs, Florida. I incorporated my research of heavy
mineral mining in northeast Florida into my Project Geo program at UNF
as student research topics.
Check out the
Project Geo Website for the following student projects:
Fall 2004; "Study
of the Mineral Characteristics of Northeast Florida Beach sand"- The Sand
Pirates
Spring 2005;
"Isolation of Heavy MInerals from Northeast Florida Beach Sand"- The Miscievous
Miner
Fall 2006; :DuPont
Titanium Mining