My Science Box

Summary

Students conduct 3 tests of water quality in the classroom that can then be applied to their terraqua columns and to the outdoors: pH, dissolved oxygen, and temperature. They make comparisons between different types of water and draw conclusions about how "healthy" each water source is for fish and other organisms. Through this process, students practice their observational and data analysis skills. Water quality monitoring data is routinely used in the "real world" to determine the effects of habitat restoration, development, pollution, and wastewater treatment. It is often the initial step in describing the health of an ecosystem. There are hundreds of ways to extend this simple activity and make connections to the real world - from monitoring water quality in a local creek to making comparisons between different bodies of water in your area.

Summary
Variation in a population is the raw material on which natural selection works. How do scientists measure and quantify variation in traits? We use garden snails as a model organism in order to describe and measure several different traits. Groups are given a small population of snails and must devise an objective way to measure a trait of their choosing (length, mass, speed, color intensity, stripes, withdrawal reflex reaction time, number of pennies it can carry, etc.). There are many ways to extend this activity. For instance, scientific protocols may be traded between groups, hypotheses may be made concerning what individuals will survive better in different environments, and snails may be tagged and released into one or more environments and the populations monitored over time. A long term open-ended project such as this provides a natural extension and assessment opportunity for both evolution and ecology concepts.

Summary
All known life is made out of a small group of chemical compounds called organic molecules. Common organic molecules include proteins, glucose, starch, lipids, and nucleic acids. This lesson plan asks students to conduct tests for proteins, glucose, and starch. At the beginning of the activity, they choose 3 items to test: one known to be “never alive”, one known to be “once was alive”, and one mystery item. In addition, each station includes a positive control. By the end of the experiment, students should be familiar with some of the major organic molecules and should recognize that living things, and substances derived from them, are made of organic molecules. In addition, this is a chance to bring in topic surrounding nutrition, health, and digestion. Since our bodies are made up of organic molecules, we need each of these molecules as nutrients in our food.

Mars Exploration Rovers: This special-effects image combines a model of the Mars rover Opportunity and 46 photogrpahs that Opportunity took of "Burns cliffs" near the edge of "Endurance Crater". Image courtesy of NASA/JPL-Caltech/Cornell.

Summary
In the summer of 2003, NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory launched two Mars Exploration Rovers - Spirit and Opportunity - towards Mars. They landed on January 3rd and 4th, 2004. Their primary scientific goal was to study the geology of Mars and search for signs of water. Although they were expected to last only 3 months, they have been vigorously sending back data for over 2 years and are still going strong! In this activity, students receive simulated Martian soils and are given the task of designing 3 tests to determine whether the soil sample contains something alive or something that was once alive. They may use any of the tools from the previous lessons – agar plates, tests for organic molecules, microscopes, or something of their own design. This assignment allows students an opportunity to demonstrate what they have learned throughout the unit, both about scientific experimentation and about the special characteristics of living things.

Objectives
Can describe the necessary characteristics of life.
Can categorize objects as alive or not alive using self-generated data.
Can demonstrate that all living things will grow and reproduce when provided with the proper nutrients and environmental conditions.
Can demonstrate that living things are made of organic molecules.
Can test for the presence of protein, glucose and starch.
Can design an experiment.
Can make observations and keep track of data over several days.
Can interpret the results of an experiment.

Vocabulary
Characteristic
Agar
Nutrients
Yeast
Organic molecule
Protein
Biuret solution
Carbohydrates
Glucose
Benedict’s solution
Starch
Iodine
Microscope

Summary
The invisibly small world of the cell comes to life as students look at plant and animal cells through a microscope. Students create wet-mount slides of onion skin, elodea leaf, and human cheek cells. They learn some of the gross differences between plant and animal cells (cell walls are present in plant but not in animal cells), and even some of the differences between different plant cells (chloroplasts are found in the leaves but not in the roots). It is suggested that this lesson take place after students learn the parts of a cell and their functions. Resources for good cell diagrams are provided in the Sources section. This lesson may be used in conjunction with the Pond Water activity for students to get a sense of the diversity of microscopic life, both single celled and multi-celled.

Summary
Here you will find a toolbox full of inquiry investigations on photosynthesis and respiration. Rather than the detailed lesson plans provided elsewhere at My Science Box, each experiment only contains a short background, materials, procedure, and going further section. It is up to you to decide which of the many experiments you wish to try with your students and how to sequence them. You will find everything from descriptions for how to extract chlorophyll, discover that plants “breathe”, recreate the experiments of Priestly and Ingenhousz, detect carbon dioxide production, and measure the rate of yeast respiration. None of these experiments require expensive equipment such as metabolism chambers or oxygen meters although those are great tools if you can afford them.

Chlorophyll extractionSummary
Chlorophyll is the pigment in plants that captures sunlight energy and uses it to drive photosynthesis. While chlorophyll does give plants their characteristic green color, chlorophyll actually comes in many colors and subtypes ranging from green to yellow to orange to red. In this experiment, students use paper chromatography to separate the many pigments from one another. First the pigments are extracted from the plants by simply crushing the plant cells open on the filter paper with the edge of a penny. When the filter paper is then immersed in rubbing alcohol, the pigments are carried upwards through capillary action. The smallest pigments travel more quickly and thus separate from the larger pigments that remain closer to the origin line.

Elodea nuttallii: Image courtesy of Christopher Fischer.Summary
Students often believe that only animals “breathe”, but all things exchange gases with their environment. It’s just that the process is not so obvious in plants. Elodea is a very common water plant that can be found in aquarium stores. As photosynthesis occurs, oxygen is produced as a by-product. Elodea releases bubbles of oxygen as it photosynthesizes. In fact, the number or volume of bubbles in a certain amount of time can be used as a rough measure of photosynthetic rate.

Summary
These experiments use a bell jar (or any other very large, clear, glass jar) to determine the identity of the gas produced by plants. It mirrors the famous experiments of Joseph Priestley and Jan Ingenhousz from the 1700’s that first demonstrated the existence of oxygen and its importance to plants and animals.

In 1771 and 1772, Priestly conducted a series of experiments using a bell jar. It was known that a candle placed in a sealed bell jar would eventually burn out and could not be relighted while still in the jar. Priestly discovered that a plant can survive indefinitely within a jar. Thus, he tried placing a plant into the jar with the burning candle. The candle went out as before and could not be relit right away. Priestly waited several days and tried again. The candle could be relit! The plant had restored the air inside the jar! (Do not try the next series of experiments since it harms animals!) Next priestly investigated what would happen to animals. He found that a mouse placed inside a sealed jar will eventually collapse. However, a mouse can survive in a sealed jar with a plant since the plant restores the air. Priestly was the first to demonstrate that oxygen is necessary for fire and animals but that given time, plants can create oxygen, allowing fires to burn and animals to breathe.

Summary
Blow through a straw into bluish liquid and watch it turn green then yellow before your eyes. Put some plants into the yellow liquid, leave it in a sunny window, come back the next day and the liquid is green. What if you leave the plants in the dark? What if you put some pond snails in? What if you put both pond snails and plants? What’s going on?

The liquid is bromthymol blue (BTB) a non-toxic acid-base indicator that can be used to indirectly measure levels of dissolved carbon dioxide (CO₂). The amount of CO₂ in a solution changes the pH. An increase in CO₂ makes a solution more acidic (the pH gets lower). A decrease in CO₂ makes a solution more basic (the pH gets higher). The reason for this is that carbon dioxide that is dissolved in water is in equilibrium with carbonic acid (H₂CO₃).

CO₂ + H₂O ↔ H₂CO₃

In any solution, while the majority of CO₂ stays as CO₂, some of it is converted to H₂CO₃, turning the solution slightly acidic. If CO₂ is added to the water, the level of H₂CO₃ will rise and the solution will become more acidic. If CO₂ is removed from the water, the amount of H₂CO₃ falls and the solution becomes more basic. Thus, acid-base indicators such as BTB can indirectly measure the amount of CO₂ in a solution.

For more than you ever wanted to know about carbonic acid, see the Wikipedia article on carbonic acid. For the example lesson plans developed by Bob Culler through Access Excellence at the National Health Museum. For a great time lapse video showing BTB color changes using elodea and snails, see Activity C13 from Addison-Wesley’s Science 10 curriculum.

Materials

• Bromthymol blue (BTB can be ordered from any science supply company such as Flinn Scientific $9 for 1 liter 0.04% BTB solution).
• Several 2 liter soda bottles
• Test tubes
• 500 ml beakers or disposable plastic or paper cups
• Water (since the pH of tap water varies, you may wish to use distilled water for your master BTB solution)
• Drinking straws
• Plastic wrap
• Elodea
• Pond snails

Procedure

1. Before the lesson, the teacher should mix a master BTB solution in one or more 2 liter soda bottles. For each 2 liter bottle, mix 120 ml 0.04% BTB with 1800 ml water. The end result should be a medium blue master BTB solution, dilute enough to be safe for plants and snails but dark enough to see the color changes.
2. Pour 200 ml diluted BTB in a beaker or cup.
3. Take a deep breath then blow bubbles in the BTB solution through a drinking straw. What happened? Why?
4. Set up a test tube rack with 3 tubes. In tube #1 put unbubbled BTB solution (blue). In tube #2 put bubbled BTB solution (yellow). Tubes #1 and #2 will be your comparison tubes. In tube #3 you have a choice of what to do. Choose one option from each of the following columns:
   

   BTB solution	Living things	Light conditions
   bubbled BTB (yellow)	spring of Elodea	Sunny window/bright light
   unbubbled BTB (blue)	5 pond snails	Dark closet/drak heavy cloth
   	both Elodea and 5 pond snails

5. Make a hypothesis about what will happen to your tube.
6. After 24 hours, check the color of your tube. What happened? Why?

Going Further