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.