Students all along Cayuga Lake are taking to the water to learn a little science and do some data collecting of their own. Our Tamara Lindstrom has more on the adventure.

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ITHACA, N.Y. -- The fifth grade students at Cayuga Heights Elementary are getting an up-close look at life under the water.

"We took water samples and we collected them and looked and saw if the lake was really clean or not," said student Michael Zhao. "And most of the water was pretty murky."

"If it's really murky it means that the plankton and little creatures in the lake are doing well because they're growing," said Ana Marie Arroyo.

The students climbed aboard the Cayuga Lake Floating Classroom to get a feel for science and get to know the nearby lake, looking under a microscope.

"Everything was just like crawling around and you could see different types of plankton and stuff," said Leah Strogatz.

And testing things like water clarity.

"That helps us to understand how the lake is responding to weather patterns and storm events and things like that," said program manager Bill Foster. "They're also looking at water quality data. Just some basic stuff most of the time: Temperature and acidity levels, dissolved oxygen."

About two thousand students will explore Cayuga Lake on the floating classroom this year, but they're not just learning. The data they collect will help build a scientific profile of the lake that's the first of its kind.

"We don't really have a good handle on what's normal for Cayuga Lake, so this helps us to get a year to year assessment of what's going on out there and we're hoping we can build a usable database of information, particularly for students to use for research projects," Foster said.

But aboard the boat, it's all about getting kids excited about science.

"It's a new experience, so it's really easy for us to find out what turns them on and engage them, and that's the name of the game," Foster said.

"Before I really didn't know anything about the lake," Strogatz said. "Now I'm like I know a ton of stuff about it and I think it's really interesting."

A short cruise to jump start the journey to learning.

The non-profit Floating Classroom holds sessions for students from fifth grade through college and even has open tours for adults.

For more on the sessions, head to floatingclassroom.blogspot.com.