For Educators

Resources and lessons to help teach about floats and explore float data

 

What is a Float?

A biogeochemical float spends its life drifting through the ocean, changing depth and collecting data at programmed intervals. It is battery-powered and hosts a suite of chemical and optical sensors. 

Videos and Animations

A Day in the Life of a Float Thumbnail

Day in the Life of a SOCCOM Float

Animation by Ted Blanco (Climate Central)

Floats in the Tank Thumbnail

SOCCOM in the Tank: Testing the Floats

Follow scientists as they test new technology in SOCCOM floats.

Information Pages

What is a Float?

One page intro to biogeochemical (BGC) floats.

Float Diagram

Original artwork by Karen Romano Young, designed to be printed out on tabloid size paper 11×17.

How to Access Data

Once you have adopted a float, you can easily access the float data to locate your float, view real-time raw and quality-controlled float data, create graphs, or download digital data. For more information and tutorials, visit our Data Visualization page.

Float List

Adopted Floats Tables

Find your float on either the SOCCOM or the GO-BGC Adopted Floats Table. These tables show all the adopted floats, their names, and their WMO.

Interactive Float Map

Interactive Float Maps

These interactive maps show current locations and trajectories of SOCCOM and GO-BGC biogeochemical floats and provide links to real-time raw and quality-controlled float data. 

3D Float Map

3D Float Visualization

Use your mouse to find your float in this interactive 3D visualization, or use the latitude/longitude of the deployment to help find your location.

Float Viz Graph

Explore Float Data

Use AdoptAFloatViz 6.0 to create a graphs or download digital data for adopted floats.

Featured Activities and Lessons

A variety of worksheets and classroom materials have been gathered and/or developed by educators who have adopted floats and used the data in their classrooms. The following activities, lesson plans, and learning modules can help students understand and synthesize different types of float data.

2022 EARTH Workshop lesson plans

A Deeper Look at Floats

These resources contain more in-depth information about floats and float data.

Float Specifications

Information webpage that details the four essential characteristics of floats.

Floats Module

Multimedia module about building and deploying these new biogeochemical floats and how they work.