One goal of the scientists on this expedition is to understand more about how water travels through rock. Believe it or not, the cracks and holes in rock allow water to move through them! OK, maybe slowly, but the water is moving through the rocks down there and learning about it will really help us understand our Earth.

One of the physics laws they use to figure out how the water moves is called Darcy’s Law. My students probably remember the sand and tubes I had set up in the back of my room last spring as I tried to model it.

It is important to learn as much about a law and how it applies to a situation before it is used in a hard to get to place like the bottom of the sea. Based on this law, scientists are going to send an environmentally friendly substance down one core hole and put instruments in another hole to detect its movement through the rock.