Interactive

Magma Drillers Save Planet Earth – resources

This interactive holds resources developed by Magma Drillers Save Planet Earth. Click on the labels for links to videos, PDFs and Word documents. The resources were developed by the University of Canterbury with funding from Curious Minds.

The activity Using Magma Drillers Save Planet Earth provides additional information on using the resources in the classroom.

Transcript

Drilling engineer

Marlene is your drilling engineer role model. Other than tramping through rivers in gumboots, she squashes and blows up rocks to understand how strong they are. Before working at the University of Canterbury, she worked as a tunnelling engineer all over the world helping to design and build giant tunnels in rock. Her favourite part of her job is to travel to cool places to collect neat rocks so that she can figure out how strong they are for building things like tunnels and geothermal power plants and for understanding how volcanoes explode. One memorable job was when she worked on a big team that designed a 15 metre wide, 10 metre high tunnel under the city of Brisbane, Australia. It was absolutely gigantic and the design made sure that the tunnel was stable for five lanes of motorway traffic. Outside of work, Marlene loves, loves, loves rock climbing, which is great because she gets to spend lots of time climbing on rocks when she’s working too!

Resources:

Introducing the game

Mission 1 – Drilling for geothermal energy

Mission 2 – Energy from magma

Text courtesy of Magma Drillers Save Planet Earth

Image drawn by Elizabeth Mordensky

Volcanologist

Ben is your volcanologist role model. As well as dreaming about cakes, Ben travels around the world trying to figure out why volcanoes erupt. His favourite part of his job is being on an active volcano, hiking around and picking up exciting looking rocks and watching volcanoes erupt. Ben recently worked together with the Department of Conservation (DOC) on assessing the hazard of being hit by rocks thrown out of the volcanoes when hiking the Tongariro Alpine Crossing track in New Zealand’s North island. DOC actually used that data to help them decide where not to build toilets! When he isn’t on a volcano, Ben is surfing, snowboarding and building sand volcanoes with his kids.

Resources:

Introducing the game

Mission 1 – Drilling for geothermal energy

Mission 2 – Energy from magma

Text courtesy of Magma Drillers Save Planet Earth

Image drawn by Elizabeth Mordensky

Introductory videos

The scientists who created Magma Drillers Save Planet Earth introduce the project in the following videos.

Image courtesy of Ben Kennedy

Teacher resources

The following resources provide help with using Magma Drillers Save Planet Earth in the classroom.

The following resources provide background information on geothermal energy in Aotearoa New Zealand and the Krafla Magma Testbed.

Logo drawn by Elizabeth Mordensky

Geophysicist

Lauren is your geophysicist role model. When she isn’t making puns, Lauren is a researcher at the University of Canterbury. She studies volcano, landslide and earthquake hazards using anything from microscopes to satellites. Some cool projects she’s currently working on include monitoring collapsing volcanoes from space and investigating how earthquakes can damage rocks and trigger landslides. When she’s not carrying heavy rocks off volcano summits or staring at computer codes, she likes to hike, ski and play music.

Resources:

Introducing the game

Mission 1 – Drilling for geothermal energy

Mission 2 – Energy from magma

Text courtesy of Magma Drillers Save Planet Earth

Image drawn by Elizabeth Mordensky

Environmental risk manager

Dan is your environmental risk manager role model. When he isn’t wearing green wigs (you’ll get this later), Dan (Ngāti Maniapoto, Waikato-Tainui) is an Earth systems scientist at the University of Auckland. He works with communities to help realise their dreams and solve their challenges. Some recent and current projects include trying to listen to rivers, understanding how taniwha can help keep us safe and looking at how what we do on land impacts our oceans. When not doing research or teaching Dan might be cycling with his whānau, surfing, paddle boarding, hiking or fishing.

Resources:

Introducing the game

Mission 1 – Drilling for geothermal energy

Mission 2 – Energy from magma

Text courtesy of Magma Drillers Save Planet Earth

Image drawn by Elizabeth Mordensky

Acknowledgement

Magma Drillers Save Planet Earth was created by Professor Ben Kennedy and Dr Jonathan Davidson with help from teachers Ian Reeves and Georgina Barrett, artist Elizabeth Mordensky and videographer Rob Stowell. Leapfrog – a 3D geological software company – created the magma holograms.

The project received funding from Curious Minds and GNS Science Beneath the waves.

Rights: The University of Waikato Te Whare Wānanga o Waikato
Published: 28 February 2024

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