We were at the edge of the field, and the leaf that we saw last time we went outside had not grown at all. It still looked the same! Around the leaf there was a little yellow flower though. It looked like it just sprung up, it was really pretty :)  I guess it only grows in the Summer time. The next spot we went was the pond. The pollen flower is all brown now and ugly. But the others around it are springing up. The third place we went was the in the woods at the creek. We saw lots of frogs hopping around and some water glider spider things gliding across the creek. We did not go to the front of the school that day because we didnt have time. But im sure if we did we would have gotten to see all the beautiful tree flowers planted up there :)

Observation Eco Tower #3

The animalswe had in our Eco Tower were 3 crickets,  3 worms, and 2 fish. Their names are ping and pong :) Now our fish are both dead, and are plants are dead. All of our crickets and worms suffored a terrible death.(not really but they are dead.)... like everything else in our Eco Towet. Its so sad :(  We think everything is dead because  it is all moldy and nasty, things cant live in that kind of environment. We had bean plants and they have died and they have nasty mold all over them! Its because they did not have enough oxygen. The water was dirty and really nasty. Some of the soil has come out into  the water.  I think on the last day it is going to stink realy really bad, like Emilys poop and death maybe. Everything is going to get even more moldy and gross. Our fish are probably going to be all the way apart!

Animal Ears

Student	Distance with Normal Ear	Distance with Enhanced Ear
Jessie	27.9	52.9
Albert	55	50
Reese	45	60
Tangie	68.6	58.6
Brandon W.	58.6	78.6
Kasey	25.3	15.3
David	40.6	55.6
Emily P.	30.6	25.6
Sierra	53.8	55.6
Stephanie	34.4	47.8
RaeShar	57	63.7
Rayshawn	47.6	41.6
Montez	45.6	30.6
Devon	51.6	87.9
TJ	40.6	63.3
Travis	50.6	55.6
Conner	89.7	128.9
Brandon H.	58.6	87.2
Emily S.	64.7	76.3
Average

We were testing how good you can hear a pen clicking with your normal ears, and enhanced ears (two paper plates around our ears). We took measurements for these both inside and outside. The lab was set up like this, somebody (your partner or mrs richardson) stand at a place and click a pen. If you hear it you take a step back. You just keep doing this until you can no longer hear it. Then you record how far away you got from the pen. To summerize this lab, we wanted to see how good we could hear with animal ears. As if we were an animal. Some animals with big ears are fennec fox, the bilby, an elephant, a jerboa, and this random dog.







Elephant

 


The Jerboa

 


Random dog

 



The Bilby

 


Fennec Fox

 

       Those were som animals with large ears. There are some animals with small ears though, like a chipmunk, hamster, mongoose, cat, and a mouse. Little noises to us can be really loud to the animals with small ears.

Chipmunk

    

Hamster

Mongoose

Cat

 

Mouse

                                                     

Eco Towers Observation #1 ! 3/30/11

This is our eco tower on observation day 1. The animals that we originally put in it was 2 fish, 4 crickets, and about 3 worms. As far as we know the worms are still alive, but unfortunately our 2 fish died :( a couple (2) of our crickets are still living. I think the resaon our worms and crickets are still alive is beacuse the top part of the eco tower has alot of oxygen for them to breath and grasses/soil for them to eat. Our fish simply died because they are gold fish, gold fish never last long. Plus they are not made for being in a small closed container like our eco tower.

Or bean plants that we planted in the soil are growing great! They are super tall and are touching the top of the bottle. The roots of the bean plants are going down into the water... about half way to the bottom. Also more algae is growing off the algae we put in there.

I think our plants turned out really good because we are just really smart and know what plants need.

Our water is very cloudy now that the fish are dead inside of it. It used to be clean and clear and a lovely play pool for little Ping and Pong. Now its a dirty watery graveyard of death.

One very unpredicted thing that happened to our eco tower is that as our fish floats there belly up, the roots from our bean plant grew into the fish! Thats what Emily said. I think its so nasty, but also cool in an awkward way. Poor fishy :( .

I predict that our bean plants will grow really big on the last day and that the water will be dirtier.

Eco Towers Sealing Day

     

                                                                       


  The Eco Tower project, we did it to experiment with an ecosystem in a bottle. To see first hand how different cycles really work in real life. My group members are Sierra, Emily, and Chris. Sierra brought in the beautiful pink pretty duck tape! Emily brought in the soil, rocks, and one of the bottles (the bottom bottle), Chris brought in the top bottle, the bean seeds, and algae (but the algae got old so we got new algae). I brought in Ping & Pong, The two wonderfully amazing small goldfish. Unfortunatly, Mrs. Richardson informed me and Emily this morning that there was a death in the eco tower, thats when i knew. Pong was such a young fish, he didnt deserve to die this young. The reason for his death has not been confirmed. But we think its because there was not enough carbon or nitrogen in the bottle.

R.I.P Pong :(

         Anyways; on the bright side, our beans are growing GREAT! The roots are going through the cloth in between our 2 bottles. It was amazing looking, how the roots just started growing down there... It was just so... wierd. Our cricket was doing good, and there were some good worms in the soil eating about the dirt.

      There are 3 cycles that keeps our ecosystem alive.The water cycle, carbon cycle, and nitrogen cycle. If it wasn't for those 3 cycles our ecosystem would not stand a chance.

Yesterday we went outside with rulers and thermometers to take temperatures and measure things! Mrs. Richardson put us all into partner groups. I got partnered up with Riley, who made a wonderful photographer and stuff :)



We put the ruler and thermometer down on the blacktop and the temperature was 20 degrees celcius.



This is when we had to take the temperature of bare soil. It was 16 degrees celcius.

The measurement of this grass was 10cm and the temperature was 17 degrees celcius



The shrubs were 71 centimeters high and 14 degrees celcius



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The tree was 8 1/2 centimeters wide and was 13 degrees celcius.



Signs of Spring

 

On March 2nd we all went outside to look for signs of spring. One of the first signs we saw were green leaves growing from a tree that lost all its leaves from winter, behind the tree we saw trash from litter bugs i assume. We heard a humming noise from a machine at the highschool, a birds "ca caww", and a train on the train tracks. I felt pretty warm, the little bit of wind was kind of chilly.

The second sign of spring that we found was a little pollen flowers that we just found out the name of. They are called Alder Catkins. next to the pond, i think this is a sign of spring because there is always pollen out during the spring time. As we found this we heard wind blowing shaking the branches on trees, and another birds "ca caww". I felt a little chilly. Warm but refreshing cold wind... if that makes sense.

The third sign was a butterfly flying peacefully through the woods, and a red branch on a tree. We heard loud beeps from some kind of vehicle and once again... the wind blowing leaves. I felt kind of hot, warmer than when we first went out there. The sun felt good :)

The fourth sign we found was in front of the school flowers were blooming on the tree. Emily said they were tree buds. We heard music in somebodys car really loud and cars driving by on the road and in the school parking lot.