One year ago, Oceanography mailed a supplement with the September issue called “Teaching Physical Concepts in Oceanography: An Inquiry-Based Approach” by Lee Karp-Boss, Emmanuel Boss, Herman Weller, James Loftin, and Jennifer Albright. The booklet “focuses on educational approaches to help engage students in learning and offers a collection of hands-on/minds-on activities for teaching physical concepts that are fundamental in oceanography. These key concepts include density, pressure, buoyancy, heat and temperature, and gravity waves.” In the first month that the booklet was posted on The Oceanography Society Web site (http://tos.org/hands-on/teaching_phys.html), it became one of the top three downloads, and has remained at or near the top ever since. (The other consistent top downloads are the Oceanography supplement “Scientifically Speaking” and Oceanography volume 18(1), the special issue on Women in Oceanography.)

Since publication of the English version of the “Physical Concepts” supplement, scientists in our international community have volunteered their time to provide Spanish, Catalan, and French translations of this booklet. Although we are not printing hard copies of these versions, they are available for download on the TOS Web site at the same url as above. We would like to thank Joaquim Ballabrera, Elisa Berdalet, Mariona Claret, Emilio García-Ladona, Antonio García-Olivares, Alfredo López de Aretxabaleta, Jordi Salat, Antonio Turiel, and Álvaro Víudez for their time and effort in translating the “Physical Concepts” booklet into Spanish and Catalan, and Jean Marie Beckers, Emmanuel Beeckmans, Jean-François Boss, Patricia Corieri, Fabrizio D’Ortenzio, Christine Delépine, Régine Dupuis, Marie-Françoise Lefèvre, Philippe Léonard, Marie le Polain, Serge Pahaut, Sylvie Pourbaix, Christine Sarrette, and Guy Talin for their time and effort in translating the booklet into French. We expect that these translations will significantly increase the impact of “Physical Concepts” in moving more of our community toward inquiry-based teaching of oceanography. Please spread the word that they are available!

– Ellen S. Kappel, Editor

Kappel, E.S. 2010. Quarterdeck: The teaching translations are here! Oceanography 23(3):5, https://doi.org/10.5670/oceanog.2010.33.

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