Our post today concerns a super fun, ultra-awesome, worldwide scavenger hunt known as geocaching. People go to this website and search for geocaches (small stashes of random items, usually) near them. But here's the catch; you are only given GPS coordinates and some abstract hints about where the geocaches are. To find your prize, you have to enter the coordinates into a GPS, which will then direct you to your destination. Finding these caches is pretty easy and lots of fun, especially since geocaches are hidden all over the world and you can find them wherever you go.
During this section of our science class, we learned more than just geocaching, though. We learned many other useful functions of the GPS unit, including everything from finding your way home to rescuing missing people. We also learned some about how these high-tech compasses/maps actually work; with the assistance of satellites, they can track down the exact locations of nearly anything, nearly anywhere on the face of the planet.
Our group decided to put this to the test, and went on a geocaching expidition ourselves. It was fun, but in all honesty, not very productive. I mean, we went on two seperate trips, and the first time we didn't find anything. We chose a cache that was too far away, and by the time we got there it was already time to start heading back. The second time we were slightly more successful. We actually visited five different places that claimed to host geocaches. However, even with all our searching, we only managed to actually locate one geocache. Our excuse was that people may have stolen the geocaches themselves, but I think we just didn't prepare very well. No one had even read the clues; we only had the coordinates. Oh well, at least we achieved something, no matter how small. And something is better than nothing it all! ;D
Peace out.
(Us hunting geocaches:)
(And here's a pic of the one geocache we actually found.)
~ Adam
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