Schools
Yes I am one man but I am not solitary in my quest and it is incredibly important to have a team who believes in the goal. How they can reflect your own belief and amplify it and grow stronger as the burden is increased.
Three Perth schools are currently involved in the One Man Epic Schools Program and have included the One Man Epic expedition as part of their curriculum. These schools, their students and teachers form an integral part of the team and share a diverse range of backgrounds, cultures and experience.
The essence of our approach to the Schools Program is to encourage students to reach their full potential by making a more meaningful contribution to the world we live through academic achievement and sporting endeavour. What unites everyone is a shared sense of mission and a passion fired by the belief that the greater your aspirations the further you will go.
Educational initiatives, specialist activities and discussion topics being undertaken by the three schools include;
- Living active lifestyles and the benefits of being fit and healthy
- Setting and surpassing extraordinary goals
- Overcoming adversity
- Nutrition and physical performance
- Each school will be presented with a custom set of expedition skis to decorate with artwork and messages of support. These will be auctioned for charity on return
- Live Q&A on the ice during the expedition
- Post expedition slideshow and Q&A with students
- Opportunity to access members of the One Man Epic team prior and during the expedition
Other schools from around Australia also have an opportunity to be involved in the One Man Epic. This could be as simple as initiating class discussions about the expedition, or using the expedition as a base for some of the above discussion topics. Alternatively, schools could undertake projects which look at some of the specifics of the expedition.
Schools Kit
The information below is designed to be used by school students to highlight the mathematical, scientific and environmental challenges of the One Man Epic expedition.
Tom’s trip involves a lot of prior planning. You may be interested in completing a project or initiating a classroom discussion based around One Man Epic.
The Exploration
During his epic adventure, Tom has to deal with a lot of daily variables simply to get by from day to day. Some of these include calorie consumption, sled weight, shifting ice, thin ice and/or open water, and weather conditions including temperature, wind direction and strength, and lighting conditions. You can find some of these variables displayed live on the One Man Epic home page. Below are some activities and questions you might like to think about and discuss.
Useful links:
- Calculate your calorie consumption
- Gear used by some arctic explorers
- Shifting arctic ice
- Arctic weather
- Map and up-to-date weather reports
- Arctic sunrise and sunset
- Lots of arctic information for kids
Activities:
On Tom’s home page, you can see temperature, wind direction and drift of ice. Make a graph depicting the change in temperature for Tom, and a separate graph depicting the change of temperature for you. How much does the temperature vary in the North Pole? How much does it vary for you?
At the bottom of every blog is a link to show Tom's coordinates at the time of writing. You can use this information to map his journey and find out the distances traveled each day, estimate his calorie usage and monitor how close he is to leads, hazard and the pole. You can also map out any Polar Bear encounters he may have!
Tom needs to monitor his calorie consumption very carefully to make sure he has enough energy to keep warm and stay alive! Before leaving for the arctic, Tom had to drink glasses of olive oil (yuck!) to ensure he had a thick enough layer of fat to keep him warm. To survive in the arctic climate, Tom needs to consume at least X calories per day. How many steps do you have to take to burn off X calories? How many calories do you burn when you are asleep? You might like to learn more nutritional information about your own diet from this link.
Make a graph depicting the varying wind direction for Tom, as well as the speed in knots over the next three days. What results can you see? Is the wind faster when it blows in a particular direction? How hard do you think it would be for Tom to walk in those conditions?
Tom is aiming to cross 800km of ice in under 60 days. Have a look at how much ice Tom crosses in a normal day compared to a day that involves swimming. How much longer do you think it would take Tom if he had to swim for four hours every third day? How long does it take you to walk one kilometre? Two? Five? How long do you think it would take you to walk the same distance if you were dragging a sled that weighed 160kg? Assuming you were fully trained and equipped, how long do you think it would take you to complete Tom’s journey?
Have a look at Tom’s equipment list. What would you need to add and remove if Tom attempted to travel the same distance through the desert?
If you have any further questions, don’t hesitate to contact Tom’s webmaster Jim on jim@onemanepic.com
Climate Change
Part of the reason Tom’s One Man Epic is taking place now is because of the effect that global warming is having on the polar ice caps. Over the past 20 years, scientists have noticed that our world is heating up. As the great polar ice floes melt, sea levels are slowly rising and the huge glaciers are becoming weaker and weaker. Some scientists have even estimated that the polar ice cap will have entirely melted away by 2014!
As our scientists learn more about the damaging nature of climate change, caring about the environment has become a pivotal issue for more and more people. International conventions were held at Kyoto in 1997 and Copenhagen in 2009 to discuss targets for countries to reduce their carbon emissions through the Emissions Trading Scheme. You can learn more about climate change from the links below.
Useful links:
- United Nations on Global Warming:
- Global warming and the arctic:
Activities:
- Why would it be dangerous for Tom to try to cross the ice in a few years time? Would his journey be the same? What could happen to him if global warming has increased? What sort of problems or dangers might he face?
- Think about the animals living in the polar environment. What impact might global warming have on them? Which animals might be advantaged/disadvantaged?
- How much do you know about global warming? What do you think the world could do? Your government? Your family? You?
- Apart from arctic expeditions such as Tom’s ‘One Man Epic’, what other things can you think of that may be affected in the future due to global warming?
The ‘Big Three’ – HIV, TB and malaria
Tom’s time in Africa had a profound impact on him, as he saw the truly devastating impact of poverty, hunger and infectious diseases. Last year, almost seven million people, mostly children, died from The ‘Big Three’ which is why the Burnet Institute has taken up the challenge to find vaccines and new drugs to help improve the health of poor communities around the world.
The Burnet Institute is Australia’s leading research institute that focuses on infectious diseases of global significance. The ‘Big Three’ are preventable diseases and yet every 30 seconds a child dies from malaria, every second someone new is infected with TB and more than two million people die each year from illness caused by AIDS. Sometimes it is hard to put a personal face to the suffering endured by disadvantaged and marginalised communities overseas who are affected by these infectious diseases.
That’s why Tom is promoting the Burnet Institute’s work fighting the ‘Big Three’ at the same time as he is battling the elements.
Useful Links:
Questions:
Do mosquitos often bite you on warm nights? Depending on where in the world you live, a single mozzie bite could well lead to more than an itchy bite the following day. Some mosquitos are carriers of viruses or parasites, which can lead to the humans they bite developing diseases such as dengue fever, yellow fever or malaria. Burnet’s scientists are working towards developing a malaria vaccine that would help the 500 million people infected every year. Can you think of some ways to prevent mosquitos from spreading disease?
For further information about the Burnet Institute, or how you can help fight The ‘Big Three’, you can call (03) 9282 2111 or email info@burnet.edu.au
Photo Sally Newmarch. Talking goal setting (and eating cake) with the Human Movement class at Methodist Ladies College Perth. MLC are the first to accept an invitation to participate in the One Man Epic schools program and have included the expedition as part of their curriculum.