Thursday, September 24, 2009

Class Pet

Our class pet will be arriving soon.....what will it be? Here is a clue...













Comment below and guess what it will be...

Tuesday, September 22, 2009

Paper Chromatography Lab


We used chromatography paper to separate the pigments in 4 different markers. Each marker's pigment separated with the use of water. The smallest pigment molecules were
carried by the water all the way to the top of the paper, the largest pigments barely moved up the paper at all.

Friday, September 18, 2009

Tree Identification Lab


We identified trees in the memorial grove at the high school. We used the Master Tree Finder's dichotomous key and identified the genus and species of the various deciduous and coniferous trees on the school grounds. We also learned where the trees grow naturally in the United States.

Sunday, September 13, 2009

Wild Plants Lab


This week we went outside into the area where the homecoming bonfire is usually held. This is an area of annual renewal. The plants present there today will be buried by a large pile of wooden pallets and will be burnt to the ground. The area will then begin to reestablish themselves and their population. So we spent one class period identifying the plants present and counting the number of individuals in that population. We studied many areas the size of a hula hoop. We did find some new species that we have not seen before and a very large spider which we are trying to identify. It was really nice to get out of the classroom and spend time studying our surrounding that we frequently overlook and ignore.
In this picture is a spider that was found in the bonfire pit area.