Rubber Ducks Used for Global Warming Research

A rubber duck may have been your favorite bathtime toy as a kid -- but these little yellow birds have taken on a new role in protecting the environment, thanks to NASA scientists working in Greenland, who are using 90 rubber ducks to track the movement of water in Greenland's Jakobshavn Glacier.

By Kathryn Hawkins. Posted on September 25 2008

A rubber duck may have been your favorite bathtime toy as a kid –but these little yellow birds have taken on a new role in protecting the environment, thanks to NASA scientists working in Greenland, who are using 90 rubber ducks to track the movement of water in Greenland’s Jakobshavn Glacier.

The rubber ducks have been dropped into holes in the glacier, and marked with the words “science experiment” and “reward,” along with an email address for the duck’s finder to get in touch with the scientists. By finding out how far the ducks travel in the water before being discovered, the scientists believe that they will be able to uncover valuable information about how glaciers move, and why they speed up in summer months.

The ducks are all still afloat, for the time being –the researchers claim that no one has called in to claim their reward as of yet.

“We haven’t heard back but it may take some time until somebody actually finds it and decides to send us an e-mail that they have found it,” researcher Alberto Behar told the Telegraph. “These are places that are quite remote so there aren’t people walking around.”

Filed under: Science, Weird,

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