Estuaries in Motion: Teaching Estuarine Flow Concepts through Video

A video explaining estuarine flow concepts was produced for a target audience of high school students in physics and earth science classes. This honors thesis explains the video production and concepts introduced in the video.A short (approximately 8 minute) video was created to explain key concepts in estuarine flow and numerical modeling of estuaries for high school students. Animation, real picture videography, and numerical model outputs were used to illustrate how scientists use physics and physics models to understand how flow in an estuary changes in space and in time. Tidal cycles, weather, and estuary shape were introduced as important environmental factors that govern the way the water flows in an estuary. Learning outcomes include student’s ability to identify estuarine currents as a three-dimensional, time varying process and understand that numerical models are useful tools to understand how currents in an estuary work. The video was provided as curriculum for high school environmental science and physics teachers