Terrariums
The first thing we did for this unit was making a terrarium. A terrarium is an environment you would make on your own, often in the form of potted plants in sand and dirt with worms. The point of this is to understand how environments work and what roles are being played. This project was pretty easy, as we just had to decide what would be in our terrarium and then build it. We spent the beginning of this project doing research on how we should go about making this terrarium. Then we had to make our proposal. We decided to make our terrarium "desert-themed" as a desert would be easy to maintain and cacti are appealing to the eyes. The final product can be seen to the left. It contains rocks, sand, soil, a cactus, a succulent, and a worm.
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Find a Solution Video
We have been tasked with choosing an ecosystem near us to document the effect humans have had on that place's environment. The ecosystem we chose was Miwok Park. You can see our proposal for it here. This project is ongoing, I will put in updates later.
Our first step was to find an ecosystem we wanted to help. For us, we wanted to restore Miwok Park to any glory it previously had. We decided on Miwok Park because it was close-by and within the community so it's something we have motivation to make better. First we started with our research. We learned that Miwok Park has 100000000.09 squirrels.
Our first step was to find an ecosystem we wanted to help. For us, we wanted to restore Miwok Park to any glory it previously had. We decided on Miwok Park because it was close-by and within the community so it's something we have motivation to make better. First we started with our research. We learned that Miwok Park has 100000000.09 squirrels.
This project was a good time. Some things I could have worked on would be allowing more help from others while editing and my generally stupid sense of humor. Two things that went well in this project were the STEM laptops that facilitated easy editing and planning, and taking pictures and videos of Miwok Park. Helping our parks and local environments is important to maintain biodiversity and prevent the deaths or extinctions of plants and animals. By doing small things such as picking up litter, you are preventing that piece of plastic from being ingested by an unsuspecting organism.
Socratic Seminar - Global Warming
Our class' Socratic seminar for this unit revolved around global warming. We were all tasked with finding 5 pieces of evidence for or against global warming before coming to class that day. Each student in our class believed in this idea of climate change, so our discussion was mostly about its effects and its urgency. We also discussed ways to reduce global warming such as recycling, reducing your energy use, drive in the car less, and planting trees.
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I feel that this Socratic seminar was beneficial to all who were a part of it. Because there was no disagreement it was easy to make discussion on the subject. It was difficult to speak at some times though, as there were so many participants. Also, the small rules there were for this activity were not enforced at all. I understood that the inner circle was the circle meant for discussion and the outer circle was meant for listening, but often it was just both circles discussing equal amounts, thus making the circle form unneeded.
CCD - Colony Collapse Disorder
We spent some time in this unit learning how to graph using statistics from bee colony collapse disorder. Also during this we analyzed what was happening to kill these bees and how we can fix this. While studying this we learned much about how neonicotinoids and other pesticides detriment the bees in their environments. Others factors, such as stress on the honey bees to produce more honey, have been attributed to CCD also. To battle these negative affects on honeybees, my group came up with hypothetical solutions. Some of our solutions were to decrease the distribution of honey, end the use of pesticides when harvesting, or breed to get more bees.
Concerning the graphs, I learned how to make them in Google Docs and how to make a trend line fit the graph.
Concerning the graphs, I learned how to make them in Google Docs and how to make a trend line fit the graph.
Natural Product Development Discovery Lab
In this lab we extracted plant samples to see and understand the process of creating antibiotics. The procedure is as follows.
Procedure Overview:
- Gather plant material
- Make wwater and alcohol extracts
- filter the extracts
- pour agar plates
- spread bacteria on agar
- place filter paper discs on bacteria
- grow overnight
Hypothesis and Results
We soaked discs in our extracts, ampicillen, and water. We put three extract soaked discs in the agar plates, 1 ampicillen soaked disc in, and 1 water soaked disc in our plate. In the end, our plates had clearings around the ampicillen and bacteria growing around the water. This result was what we expected, since ampicillen is a known antibiotic. I'm surprised at our experiment meeting expectations since we had a few errors, such as pouring too much agar in our plates. There were no clearings around our extracts, meaning that they did not work as antibodies, unfortunately.
I thought this lab was somewhat boring. It dragged on for weeks, even when we switched units. At first I had lots of fun finding and crushing leaves, etc. but when we moved onto the parts of the procedure involving plates and reactions, I lost interest since it became hard to understand what we were meant to be doing.
We did this lab to find potential cures for human ailments by testing extracts to see if they have antibiotic activity. Biodiversity ties into this as we used plants to find our antibiotics. If we didn't have a diverse array of plants around us then we could be denied access to an essential medicine.
We soaked discs in our extracts, ampicillen, and water. We put three extract soaked discs in the agar plates, 1 ampicillen soaked disc in, and 1 water soaked disc in our plate. In the end, our plates had clearings around the ampicillen and bacteria growing around the water. This result was what we expected, since ampicillen is a known antibiotic. I'm surprised at our experiment meeting expectations since we had a few errors, such as pouring too much agar in our plates. There were no clearings around our extracts, meaning that they did not work as antibodies, unfortunately.
I thought this lab was somewhat boring. It dragged on for weeks, even when we switched units. At first I had lots of fun finding and crushing leaves, etc. but when we moved onto the parts of the procedure involving plates and reactions, I lost interest since it became hard to understand what we were meant to be doing.
We did this lab to find potential cures for human ailments by testing extracts to see if they have antibiotic activity. Biodiversity ties into this as we used plants to find our antibiotics. If we didn't have a diverse array of plants around us then we could be denied access to an essential medicine.