Day 6 Eco Column

The column looks great! Our spider and bugs are still thriving. Diane's banana is moldy, but no fruit flies like we hoped for. The bug I placed in the column can't be found, but our new bugs that just appeared are running all over the place. The water at the bottom of the column is very clear and you can see the minows swimming around and the snails stuck on the walls of the column. The walls of the column are damp and misty looking, but our soil seems dry. The green plants we placed in it are looking very healthy and are growing.

Eco Column Observation Day 2

Today I observed that our column was full of condensation every chamber had some condensation. That was because we did not get to observe them until the evening. We added some water and observed that the aquarium animals were still living so there is still Oxygen in the system and the terrestrial animals were still living also. I added a small piece of fresh banana to the decomposition chamber but I did not notice any drastic change to the banana's shape or color! Interesting, I thought it would be browner but it appeared to be pretty close to the same yellow color that it was yesterday. I'll wait and see tomorrow.

Soil Sedimentation Bottles

Touching and observing the soils was very interesting and quite a unique experience for me.
I thought I understood soils and
porosity. But guess what I was wrong!!!!

Sedimentation Bottle

Today we observed the different soils that everyone brought. We looked at it, touched it and smelled it. We then mixed it with 1000 mL of water. We had to make a prediction of what would happen to the water.

Today was lots fun. We learned different ways to teach our students how to learn about density. We used colored water with different amounts of salt. When observing our eco column, I am happy to say my bug is still alive. There's lots of condensation forming all around the bottles and I am wondering if it's because we have lots of moist soil inside. There was some other group that didn't have as much condensation and I "think" maybe it's because they din't have as much moist soil, just lots of pine needle and leaves.(maybe?) Today was a good day.

I thought that the Rainbow Straws activity was a dual learning experience because we had to make our own solutions and then layer them. Which helped us to progress into layering 5 unknown solutions in the clear straw. Learning how to make up different density solutions, helped students to understand how density works.

Density "Rainbow Staws"

We learned how to layer and determine the density of different salt water solutions that we mixed into a straw. Then we received 5 unknown solutions to layer into the straw in order to learn how to determine their position by density in the clear plastic straw.