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rebeccmeisterI think I might finally be finished with this round of Science in the Kitchen experiments, thank goodness. Getting this project wrapped up has been causing me all sorts of anxiety - not only did I need to do test runs of these experiments, I then needed to figure out the best method for communicating the experiments to students for the fall. We have to have this stuff all in place far enough in advance of the start of the semester so we can also ensure we have supplies lined up and available to students who will be taking the course remotely. I have just been continually feeling like I've been flailing at this stuff to get it done but making too-slow progress.
In any case, as of today I have reasonably complete drafts for the 3 experiments I said I'd spearhead. I've already blogged about the yeast/bread dough experiment a bit. It wound up taking me 5 days to complete the refrigerated portion satisfactorily, and the refrigerated dough failed to reach the same ending volume as the room-temperature dough, interestingly. This is why I am paranoid and do test runs of experiments before asking students to do them. Attempting to forestall all kinds of trouble, although I always find that students manage to find many other creative ways to have problems even under the best of circumstances.
The next one requiring work was a project on what we've been calling "Seed Germination Ecology," although it has more-or-less wound up being about plant competition. So the inverse of all those "companion planting" guides you've ever heard about. The challenge there is creating an experiment that can be successfully completed in a 2-week timeframe. That means figuring out what plants will grow fast enough to produce meaningful and interesting outcomes.
So when I was at the hardware store back in July, I hurriedly bought corn seeds, radish seeds, marigold, and some variety of fancy pea seeds, because I needed to start the test out NOW. The plant choices were partly inspired by reading online about other plant competition teaching experiments, so they weren't a totally random flail.
I planted them at different densities and in a couple different combinations: each by itself, then combinations of corn + peas, and radish + marigolds. The seed arrangement photos came out surprisingly well:
5 marigold + 5 radish:
All marigold:
All radish (hardest to see but I think you can see them if you look closely!):
Peas and corns:
Getting the pots all ready:
Midway through, I discovered a problem:
(This is why I do test runs!!)
Three out of the four plant species came up. But where are the peas??
A good reason to have set up this initial experiment.
And here's how things looked at the end of the full 2-week trial period:
Still no peas. *shakes fist at fancy-pants pea variety* The marigold plants are also tiny, which is perhaps unsurprising when you consider how small the seeds are (no room in those seeds for an initial energy boost to give the plants a head start).
On top of that, miss Emma discovered the tasty-looking plant morsels the night before I was ready to harvest the plants, and chewed on and uprooted a bunch of the corn plants! As one of my colleagues commented, a classic example of "demonic intrusion" in an experiment! *glares at cat, then melts and gives her pets*
The last step for this project was testing out an app to measure total leaf area. I'm not super thrilled about the app, but I eventually got it to work for me.
-
Thankfully, development and testing for the third project, on seed germination, wasn't nearly so onerous because we have run a version of this project in the past. In the past, we had students set up one set of seed germination dishes at room temperature (some dishes exposed to light, others kept in the dark), and one set of dishes kept in a warm incubator. The challenge is that it's very hard to create a good controlled-temperature environment in home settings (see: our life at home with the ants and crickets from 2018-2019). So I thought it would instead be interesting to compare a plant species that is photoinhibited (lettuce) vs. a plant species that isn't (legumes), just to get students thinking about what might be going on that's physiologically different between different plant species. We will give them a bunch of resources to conduct specific follow-up experiments from here, once their curiosity's piqued.
So the main other thing I wanted to accomplish was just getting a photo of some germinated vs. non-germinated seeds.
Notice that the seed that is front and center has, in fact, germinated, as indicated by the tiny bit of radicle (plant root) sticking out of it:
I took this photo to encourage students to look very closely when counting up the total number of seeds that germinate.
The cowpeas below took too long to germinate (48h instead of a mere 24h), but a follow-up test with some lentils (not pictured) suggests the lentils will work fine.
And that concludes this summer's Science in the Kitchen projects. Again, thank goodness. I have so many other things I need to get done still.
In any case, as of today I have reasonably complete drafts for the 3 experiments I said I'd spearhead. I've already blogged about the yeast/bread dough experiment a bit. It wound up taking me 5 days to complete the refrigerated portion satisfactorily, and the refrigerated dough failed to reach the same ending volume as the room-temperature dough, interestingly. This is why I am paranoid and do test runs of experiments before asking students to do them. Attempting to forestall all kinds of trouble, although I always find that students manage to find many other creative ways to have problems even under the best of circumstances.
The next one requiring work was a project on what we've been calling "Seed Germination Ecology," although it has more-or-less wound up being about plant competition. So the inverse of all those "companion planting" guides you've ever heard about. The challenge there is creating an experiment that can be successfully completed in a 2-week timeframe. That means figuring out what plants will grow fast enough to produce meaningful and interesting outcomes.
So when I was at the hardware store back in July, I hurriedly bought corn seeds, radish seeds, marigold, and some variety of fancy pea seeds, because I needed to start the test out NOW. The plant choices were partly inspired by reading online about other plant competition teaching experiments, so they weren't a totally random flail.
I planted them at different densities and in a couple different combinations: each by itself, then combinations of corn + peas, and radish + marigolds. The seed arrangement photos came out surprisingly well:
5 marigold + 5 radish:
All marigold:
All radish (hardest to see but I think you can see them if you look closely!):
Peas and corns:
Getting the pots all ready:
Midway through, I discovered a problem:
(This is why I do test runs!!)
Three out of the four plant species came up. But where are the peas??
A good reason to have set up this initial experiment.
And here's how things looked at the end of the full 2-week trial period:
Still no peas. *shakes fist at fancy-pants pea variety* The marigold plants are also tiny, which is perhaps unsurprising when you consider how small the seeds are (no room in those seeds for an initial energy boost to give the plants a head start).
On top of that, miss Emma discovered the tasty-looking plant morsels the night before I was ready to harvest the plants, and chewed on and uprooted a bunch of the corn plants! As one of my colleagues commented, a classic example of "demonic intrusion" in an experiment! *glares at cat, then melts and gives her pets*
The last step for this project was testing out an app to measure total leaf area. I'm not super thrilled about the app, but I eventually got it to work for me.
-
Thankfully, development and testing for the third project, on seed germination, wasn't nearly so onerous because we have run a version of this project in the past. In the past, we had students set up one set of seed germination dishes at room temperature (some dishes exposed to light, others kept in the dark), and one set of dishes kept in a warm incubator. The challenge is that it's very hard to create a good controlled-temperature environment in home settings (see: our life at home with the ants and crickets from 2018-2019). So I thought it would instead be interesting to compare a plant species that is photoinhibited (lettuce) vs. a plant species that isn't (legumes), just to get students thinking about what might be going on that's physiologically different between different plant species. We will give them a bunch of resources to conduct specific follow-up experiments from here, once their curiosity's piqued.
So the main other thing I wanted to accomplish was just getting a photo of some germinated vs. non-germinated seeds.
Notice that the seed that is front and center has, in fact, germinated, as indicated by the tiny bit of radicle (plant root) sticking out of it:
I took this photo to encourage students to look very closely when counting up the total number of seeds that germinate.
The cowpeas below took too long to germinate (48h instead of a mere 24h), but a follow-up test with some lentils (not pictured) suggests the lentils will work fine.
And that concludes this summer's Science in the Kitchen projects. Again, thank goodness. I have so many other things I need to get done still.
no subject
Date: 2020-08-12 11:26 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-08-12 01:01 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-08-12 05:03 pm (UTC)Which fancy-pants pea variety did you try?
no subject
Date: 2020-08-12 12:27 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-08-12 01:01 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-08-12 02:09 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-08-12 02:47 pm (UTC)Sometimes it's a good idea to try sprouting them, just to see what the overall seed viability looks like.
In contrast to your experience, almost everything I tried to germinate from seed this year, worked! The only exception was that darned Greek Mountain Tea, sigh.