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Introduction to Lagrangian Floats

Fred Bingham
Fred Bingham
Professor
University of North Carolina

Dr. Bingham received his Ph.D. from the University of California, San Diego in Oceanography. His research interests include global distributions of sea surface salinity and large scale regional physical oceanography in the Kuroshio, the western North and Equatorial Pacific, and Onslow Bay, North Carolina.

Webinar Clip
What is the difference between a Lagrangian and a surface drifter? In this clip, Dr. Bingham explains that difference and how Lagrangian floats are used for at-sea salinity research.

Full webinar: Follow that Salt! Results and the Future of Salinity Exploration

Click here for a transcript of this clip (PDF, 34.4 KB).

Resources
Applicable Science Standards
  • Planning and Carrying Out Investigations Planning and Carrying Out Investigations. Scientists and engineers plan and carry out investigations in the field or laboratory, working collaboratively as well as individually. Their investigations are systematic and require clarifying what counts as data and identifying variables or parameters.
  • Constructing Explanations and Designing Solutions Constructing Explanations and Designing Solutions. The goal of science is the construction of theories that provide explanatory accounts of the world. A theory becomes accepted when it has multiple lines of empirical evidence and greater explanatory power of phenomena than previous theories.