Geocaching is a treasure hunt, in which participants use a GPS enabled device to hide and seek containers, called "geocaches" or "caches", at specific locations marked by coordinates all over the world. You can find a geocache near your home, in the city, in the bush, underwater or on vacation in a distant location.
The caches themselves vary in size and difficulty to locate. They could be small and well hidden tokens with a code or a large container with items to trade inside.
Common types of geocache hunts include:
More information about geocaching and a more complete list of types of caches can be found here.
Let's first find a few caches in your area. This will give you some ideas about what makes a great cache and how the system works.
A great place to start is Geocaching Australia. Read through the frequently asked questions at the top of the page and then use the map to zoom in on caches near you.
Symbols on the pins represent the type of cache located. Click on a location pin and follow the link to find out more information about the cache such as difficulty, logged finds and clues. For a traditional cache the exact coordinates will be given and this can be copied into google maps or similar to help you locate the cache.
As a start try traditional caches that are low in difficulty. There are also geocaching apps available for phones you can investigate.
Let's create our own multi-stage geocache hunt around your school. We will not use the geocaching website to log these hunts as we don't want to create public caches on school grounds. We will design the caches to be located by other students in your class or in other classes at your school for a limited time so we don't have to maintain the cache.
Let's create a 3-stage puzzle hunt. With the following stages:
Steps:
Tip: To make caches easier to hide and unlikely to be found or tampered with by muggles(those not on the hunt) you can use a small coin or token engraved with a code (number or word) that can be padlocked to a location. The code can be given to the hunt creator as proof you found the cache and they can then give the next puzzle or final cache treasure box.
Use the coordinates of your cache locations to determine the distance to travel between locations. This can be done using a gps enabled device, an online calculator or google maps. Can you develop clues that involve the distance?
locate positions on the earth’s surface given latitude and longitude using a range of methods; for example, a global positioning system (GPS), a globe, an atlas and digital technologies
determine distances between two places on Earth using appropriate technology