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rebeccmeisterToday Emma is fairly low-energy. She had her first doses of antibiotic and steroid yesterday evening, so I have to imagine it's going to take a couple of days before she starts to really perk up and feel any better. I'm sure the combination of not feeling well, trailer travel, hours at the vet, then more trailer travel all wore her out, too. I've offered her four different kinds of food today. The most popular of the four appears to be the prescription dry food from the vet. She didn't touch the beef pate, ate some of the lamb, and nibbled a bit at the salmon. Oh, she is still happy to accept cheese offerings, which I'm giving to her along with the antibiotic since it is supposed to be taken with food. And she isn't acting super agitated.
One day at a time for now.
She really likes to sleep in this spot on my new desk.
Thankfully there is plenty of room to share on the new desk.
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Asmallorys_camera likes to put it: else?
I am working on testing ideas for a science project for one of my courses this fall, the course on experimental design and scientific writing. Ordinarily, we put students in groups of 4 and have them conduct a set of experiments using resources on campus. However, since we can't guarantee that we will be on campus for any length of time this fall, a colleague and I conferred and decided to develop a set of experiments that students can conduct at home instead. A couple of the experiments are designed to be conducted outdoors, and involve characterizing herbivory or testing ideas in optimal foraging. The other experiments are designed to be conducted indoors, for those who might not have access to outdoors spaces.
We want to make one project be about yeast growth. There's a surprising amount of testing that one needs to do to create a high-quality pilot experiment to get students pointed in the right direction for this kind of project. One of many factors is that we have to keep costs down, so the tools involved all need to be cheap.
At first I thought it would be cool to track both dough doubling time AND changes in dough pH, but when I went to do some actual testing I discovered that it's not really possible to detect changes in dough pH using pH paper. (I also had to create a sponge to test pH changes because dough itself is not moist enough). So instead my current thought is to have students conduct a 2x2 experiment where they examine impacts of temperature and initial acidity on dough doubling time.
...7 hours later, my fridge samples haven't budged at all, yet (2 degrees Celsius). With a modest yeast addition, my room-temperature samples doubled in 2 hours (25 degrees Celsius), and hit their peak volume at 3 hours. So that's at least a partial win.
The other partial win was figuring out an appropriate dough volume to prepare and work with a set of 3/4-pint Mason jars as graduated cylinders.
Labeling my graduated cylinder volumes:
In the process of working on this, I also created an excellent object-lesson in both what to do and what NOT to do in terms of data collection and science notebook organization. Note the back-of-envelope scribbles on the left, vs. the nicely organized notes in the notebook on the right:
More to follow, I'm sure.
One day at a time for now.
She really likes to sleep in this spot on my new desk.
Thankfully there is plenty of room to share on the new desk.
-
As
mallorys_camera likes to put it: else?I am working on testing ideas for a science project for one of my courses this fall, the course on experimental design and scientific writing. Ordinarily, we put students in groups of 4 and have them conduct a set of experiments using resources on campus. However, since we can't guarantee that we will be on campus for any length of time this fall, a colleague and I conferred and decided to develop a set of experiments that students can conduct at home instead. A couple of the experiments are designed to be conducted outdoors, and involve characterizing herbivory or testing ideas in optimal foraging. The other experiments are designed to be conducted indoors, for those who might not have access to outdoors spaces.
We want to make one project be about yeast growth. There's a surprising amount of testing that one needs to do to create a high-quality pilot experiment to get students pointed in the right direction for this kind of project. One of many factors is that we have to keep costs down, so the tools involved all need to be cheap.
At first I thought it would be cool to track both dough doubling time AND changes in dough pH, but when I went to do some actual testing I discovered that it's not really possible to detect changes in dough pH using pH paper. (I also had to create a sponge to test pH changes because dough itself is not moist enough). So instead my current thought is to have students conduct a 2x2 experiment where they examine impacts of temperature and initial acidity on dough doubling time.
...7 hours later, my fridge samples haven't budged at all, yet (2 degrees Celsius). With a modest yeast addition, my room-temperature samples doubled in 2 hours (25 degrees Celsius), and hit their peak volume at 3 hours. So that's at least a partial win.
The other partial win was figuring out an appropriate dough volume to prepare and work with a set of 3/4-pint Mason jars as graduated cylinders.
Labeling my graduated cylinder volumes:
In the process of working on this, I also created an excellent object-lesson in both what to do and what NOT to do in terms of data collection and science notebook organization. Note the back-of-envelope scribbles on the left, vs. the nicely organized notes in the notebook on the right:
More to follow, I'm sure.
