Some School Projects

Auditorium lights dimmed and thousands of youngsters nationwide went silent Monday when a $7 million School Science Project Ideas whisked them to the bottom of the Mediterranean Sea, live and in color. Television screens showed them the satellite-relayed view of a camera-equipped submersible robot being towed over the ocean floor. It was the first of two weeks of live broadcasts to an expected 250,000 students at 13 museums from British Columbia to Florida for School Science Project Ideas.

The project suffered a temporary setback last week when the 7-foot-long robot Jason, a newer version of the camera-carrying submersible that explored the sunken ocean liner Titanic, sank among the ruins of an ancient Roman trading ship off the coast of Italy.

The cable used to lower the million-dollar Jason and its mobile garage or transporter, Argo, snapped and the pair plunged 2,100 feet to the soft, silty ocean floor. Organizers said the show would go on - with or without Jason. The robot was resurrected apparently undamaged Saturday but still wasn't used in Monday's 40-minute broadcast.

Jason has propellers and can be remotely guided in and around underwater objects. Its replacement Monday, Medea, was merely a sophisticated camera platform that is towed over a target area from the surface.

In addition to the underwater shots, expedition leader Robert Ballard, discoverer of the Titanic, talked to the students from the bridge of the support ship Star Hercules in the Mediterranean. He took questions from students at three of the 13 participating museums, narrated live footage of underwater volcanoes and introduced films on satellite technology and the ancient Greek voyager Jason, for whom the 20th-century undersea robot was named.

"Our journey to the Mediterranean has been anything but uneventful," Ballard said in recounting Jason's mishap. "The voyage became a nonstop exercise in problem-solving."

During weeks of lessons and classroom discussion, the students have developed an affection for the little robot explorer. The biggest laugh of the morning came when a boy identified only as Kenneth, a grade-school student from Memphis, Tenn., got to question Ballard. "Is Jason alright?" he asked. "Jason is fine," Ballard said. "His pride's a little hurt but luckily none of his instrumentation is."

Greg Tardiff, a seventh grader from Beverly, Mass., said word of Jason's loss last week spread rapidly through the Shore Country Day School.

"We were crushed," the 13-year-old said. "We thought the whole thing would be called off." Paul Fontaine of Boston's Museum of Science said he was "thrilled" with the show's premiere, although disappointed that the slightly less than state-of-the-art stand-in took Jason's place.