Galloway, N.J. - Lake Fred's resume includes powering a sawmill, growing cranberries, therapist, everyone's favorite sunset date, youth rowing camp host, most photographed spot on the Galloway campus and outdoor classroom. 

Over the fall months, we focused on Fred's role as a classroom to capture some of the lessons taught on the lake. Students have drawn inspiration from the scenery and professors have found projects that challenge students to apply math and science concepts in a real environment.   

We followed Professor of Mathematics Chia Lin Wu's Calculus III class, Associate Professor of Environmental Science Emma Witt's Exploring Lake Fred class and Associate Professor of Painting Jacob Feige's Painting from Observation class. 

Photos and story by Susan Allen 

Students in Emma Witt's Exploring Lake Fred class were tasked with creating a bathymetric map to illustrate changes in depth using a color gradient. Data collection was conducted by canoe. 

 

Students used stadia rods to collect depth data in various locations on the lake. 

 

Students used a smartphone app, Collector by ArcGIS, to log each depth reading and its associated location.

 The data collection resulted in the above map that shows the deepest part of Lake Fred near the Lakeside Lodge. 

 

Chia Lin Wu challenged Lana Vo, Serena Su and Rocco Mancuso to look for a simple closed curve on campus and to calculate its area. Lake Fred provided the perfect shape to work with. 

 

To get the overall shape of Lake Fred, the students sent a drone into the sky to capture a bird's-eye-view image. They also walked the perimeter with a Vernier LabQuest 3, a device that captures GPS coordinates. 

 

Collecting coordinates every second gave the team 1,543 data sets describing the shape of the lake. With the outline of Fred drawn, the students then used the Green Theorem from Calculus III to calculate the area of the simple closed curve. Another technique, the Reimann sum, partitions the shape of the lake into rectangles and adds up their individual areas. 

 

The students presented their calculation to fellow math majors at a Math Seminar. Using Calculus III, they found the area to be over 215,000 meters squared. Their next idea is to use sonar to calculate depth for a volume calculation. 

 

Lake Fred was the subject that filled many canvases during Jacob Feige's Painting from Observation class. Despite a sprinkling rain, Nicholas Cerniglia found a view with earthy tones under the cover of fall's colorful foliage.  

 

Jacob Feige walked around the lake stopping to instruct each student and to offer guidance. 

 

Stockton's campus provides endless inspiration to art majors. View more of their paintings on Flickr.