What do plants eat? This unit explores plants and how they make food.
Students explore whether rooftop gardens are a viable option for combating the urban heat island effect. Can rooftop gardens reduce the temperature inside and outside houses? Teams each design and construct two model buildings using foam core board, one with a "green roof" and the other with a black tar paper roof. They measure and graph the ambient and inside building temperatures while under heat lamps and fans. Then students analyze the data and determine whether the rooftop gardens are beneficial to the inhabitants.
The topic of photosynthesis is a fundamental concept in biology, chemistry, and earth science. Educational studies have found that despite classroom presentations, most students retain their naive idea that a plant's mass is mostly derived from the soil, and not from the air. To call students' attention to this misconception, at the beginning of this lesson we will provide a surprising experimental result so that students will confront their mental mistake. Next, we will help students better envision photosynthesis by modeling where the atoms come from in this important process that produces food for the planet. This lesson can be completed in 50-60 minutes, with the students working on in-class activities during 20-25 minutes of the lesson. As a prerequisite, students need an introductory lesson on photosynthesis, something that includes the overall chemical equation. If students have already studied the intracellular photosynthetic process in detail, this video can still be very helpful because students often miss the big picture about photosynthesis. Materials needed include red, white and black LEGO bricks (described in downloadable hand-out) or strips of red, white and black paper plus paper clips (directions provided in downloadable hand-out). In addition to class discussions, the major in-class activity of this video involves the students' modeling with LEGO bricks or colored paper where the atoms come from in photosynthesis.
A very short video introduction to how photosynthesis cycles energy through an ecosystem and a "real-world" application of ratios! Lindsay Hollister, JPPM's horticulturalist, taps a black walnut tree for its sap and park staff boil it down to create syrup. Included in this video are an animated food web showing the directions of energy flow during photosynthesis and when sap is "rising," which can be extended by students to include humans or more parts of their local ecosystem. Use the video as an introduction to activities about sugar and biological storage, and an excuse to sample maple syrup to taste the sugar. Alternatively, research trees nearby students could help tap and witness the biological transfer of energy themselves.
Always be sure you can successfully identify a plant before using it and take precautions to avoid negative reactions.
This resource is part of Jefferson Patterson Park and Museum’s open educational resources project to provide history, ecology, archaeology, and conservation resources related to our 560 acre public park. More of our content can be found here on OER Commons or from our website at jefpat.maryland.gov. JPPM is a part of the Maryland Historical Trust under the Maryland Department of Planning.
This resource is a video abstract of a research paper created by Research Square on behalf of its authors. It provides a synopsis that's easy to understand, and can be used to introduce the topics it covers to students, researchers, and the general public. The video's transcript is also provided in full, with a portion provided below for preview:
"Just as it does for humans, morning signals the time to wake up for plants. Sunlight triggers stomata, which are tiny pores on plant leaves, to open. This boosts photosynthesis by letting CO₂ in and O₂ out. Cells known as guard cells are the gatekeepers of this process, and opening the stomata requires a lot of energy. But scientists have long wondered where this energy comes from. Because while guard cells serve a key photosynthetic function, they appear less equipped than surrounding cells to perform photosynthesis. Now, researchers from HKU and ETH have discovered guard cells’ secret source of fuel. Experiments on Arabidopsis plants showed that guard cells import most of their energy in the form of sugar from surrounding mesophyll cells. Mesophyll cells contain many more chloroplasts than guard cells, helping them produce large amounts of sugar through photosynthesis..."
The rest of the transcript, along with a link to the research itself, is available on the resource itself.
This unit is under construction and should be ready by January 2019. Some of the materials for this unit will be taken from the former Unit 4 (Ecosystems Matter and Energy) but will also contain new material. Here is some of the source material that will be in the new unit when we get to it.
This resource is a video abstract of a research paper created by Research Square on behalf of its authors. It provides a synopsis that's easy to understand, and can be used to introduce the topics it covers to students, researchers, and the general public. The video's transcript is also provided in full, with a portion provided below for preview:
"Across all three domains of life, organisms have adapted to earth’s natural light-dark cycle, setting their genetic, metabolic, and behavioral clocks to it. That includes the single-celled cyanobacterium Prochlorococcus, one of the most dominant phytoplankton in the oceans. Recent lab experiments revealed that cyanophages, viruses that infect Prochlorococcus, also show light-dark rhythms and express different genes according to their stage of infection: early, middle, or late. But whether that phenomenon occurs in the open ocean remained unclear. To find out, researchers analyzed genetic material from the North Pacific Subtropical Gyre. They set out to test whether cyanophages express infection genes in unsynchronized or synchronized patterns. In unsynchronized expression, early, middle, and late infection genes are transcribed at any time. While in synchronized expression, gene transcription evolves with the time of day. Early genes, for example, are expressed at sunrise and late genes close to sunset..."
The rest of the transcript, along with a link to the research itself, is available on the resource itself.
The activity walks the students through the processes of Photosynthesis and Cellular Respiration.
WOW lessons are designed for infusion into the existing science curriculums for college freshmen and advanced high school students. The lessons use the aquatic environment and real lake data to explore basic science concepts through two different approaches: a directed study “Studying” and an inquiry “Investigating” approach. The directed studies allow students to apply and learn concepts through direct, guided experience. The inquiry lessons provide a more open-ended opportunity for students to discover the same concepts.
Each teacher's lesson plan provides general direction for guiding students to understand the topic through the directed study and the inquiry approach. Student lessons are organized into a thinking framework of six sequential components that are critical for improving scientific and technological literacy: knowledge base, experimental design, data collection, data management and analysis, interpretation of results, and reporting results. The teacher lesson plans follow the same format.
Lesson titles are simple and descriptive so that you may easily find useful materials. We recommend you begin by reviewing the student lessons that may be appropriate for your class. When you've found a student lesson to use, return to the menu below to review the associated teacher's lesson plan. There are tutorials to help you and your students get familiar with the site, they may be accessed from the menu below, or at the top of any 'teacher' page.
This resource is a video abstract of a research paper created by Research Square on behalf of its authors. It provides a synopsis that's easy to understand, and can be used to introduce the topics it covers to students, researchers, and the general public. The video's transcript is also provided in full, with a portion provided below for preview:
"Chloroplast protein of 12 kDa (CP12) participates in the Calvin Benson Bassham (CBB) cycle and many other processes in higher plants, microalgae, and cyanobacteria. The CP12-encoding gene is conserved in many diatoms, but CBB cycle regulation differs between diatoms and other photosynthetic organisms, and CP12 has not been characterized in these ecologically important and evolutionarily complex microalgae. A recent study addressed this knowledge gap by characterizing CP12 in the marine diatom Thalassiosira pseudonana. Using a variety of techniques, researchers found that this CP12 is expressed under both light and dark conditions and throughout growth and that it exhibits some features of intrinsically disordered proteins, like CP12 proteins in other organisms. The protein is an elongated cylinder with kinks and numerous unstable dynamic α-helices. In addition, it exists as a dimer, in contrast to previously characterized monomeric CP12s..."
The rest of the transcript, along with a link to the research itself, is available on the resource itself.