The Spread of Oil Spills

Team: 65

School: Los Alamos High

Area of Science: Environmental Science

Proposal: In this project we will try to model oil spills in the ocean like the resent spill in the Gulf of Mexico. This problem is important because oil spills are becoming a major problem with more offshore drilling and can greatly damage ecosystems of the ocean. Oil spills greatly affects marine birds, sticking in their plummage and greatly affects how temperatures affect them and their buoyancy in water. Even after cleaned, less than 1% of aquatic birds survive. For sea otters and such, like seals, it covers their fur and causes extreme body temperature changes and hypothermia. The oil covers the surface of the ocean and blocks sunlight, killing off algae and microrganisms like plankton and phytoplankton. Oil spills are excedingly hard to clean up and use up many resources to fix. In our program we will model how things like leak size, currents and other variables in oil spills affect the size and density of the spill. We will also model how clean up crews can do their job easiest and fastest.

Team Members:

Sponsoring Teacher: Wyatt Dumas

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