Meeting up with Ellie (another teacher fellow)

9 May

Today I went to Ocean Beach to catch up with Ellie. She is another teacher fellow from Christchurch. She is studying Pingao plants in the sand dunes. I thought I could give her a hand then take her into Havelock North and maybe show her here at PFR.

She was with a Masters student that she had been working with at Lincoln. He was looking at analysing the terrain using a drone service to give a 2D visual representation. He had a GPS device and an incline measurer, which he could use as well at ground level. From what he was recording on the ground and what the drone gave he should be able to give an accurate 3D image.

When I joined them they told me they were looking for Katipo spider. I always thought they lived in drift wood and not here. But I was proven wrong. Ellie and Mike had mapped out a 200m x 5m transection from the beach inland. Then they recorded the plant life with GPS coordinates and measured the height, width and depth of each plant, whether they were a single plant or a group of plants, and the incline of the sand dune. They only did this for a 5x5m plot. This became a representation of the whole transaction. Once that was done they then checked every plant for katipo spider, recording each one they found with their sex, their plant host details, their web structure, and their GPS location. They weren’t finding many but they were definitely finding some. In their first transect they found 6 katipo. 

Marking out the transection.

Recording all the plants living in a 5m square.
While Mike measures the size of the plants and the incline of the land,
Ellie uses a GPS unit to record its location.

Then its time to sit down and search in the plants for Katipo spiders.

Can you see the web? Somewhere in this photo is a spider. I can't find it. Can you?

 

Sometimes something else is found. This caterpillar has a horn. Any idea why?

Later in the afternoon I brought Ellie into PFR for a mini tour. She was amazed at how much was happening in plant research.

The next curriculum days

15 -16 April

The second curriculum courses were held in Wellington over these two days. It was also opportunity to catch up with the other science fellows to see how they were going.

The first day we spent the morning looking at the first science capability of ‘using evidence’ and unpacking what this means and how to teach it. We made balloon racers, and then tested them. We were able to observe each other’s cars and take some of their successful ideas and incorporate them into our adapted design. This was using evidence we see from their success.

We did three activities based on the sun. One was looking for places where UV wasn’t present by using UV beads.. The next activity was using a model of an earth and sun (lamp) to look at seasons. The last activity was using an OHP as the sun and a model of the moon. We were the earth and turned ourselves while holding the moon, in the light of the sun, to look at phases of the moon. The ‘using evidence’ for these activities was prior knowledge and testing ideas.

In the afternoon some of the fellows shared activities they had prepared around the context Planet Earth and Beyond, and using the capability of Using Evidence. The other fellows rotated around the activities and at the end they gave feedback and feed forward for each activity. My activity was a game called “Rock”. The participants put a rock on each square of the 4x4 grid, and then they read out clue cards and put a counter of their colour on a rock square that matched the description. When someone had 4 counters in a row they called out “ROCK!” to win. The ‘using evidence’ for this activity was using the cards as the evidence to identify the rocks.

There were other activities such as air pressure in balloons, reading temperature graphs to answer questions, making sink holes, making clouds in bottles, making geysers, and water pressure. I now have plenty of PEB activities to use for exploring the capability of ‘using evidence’.

The last activity took us to Te Papa where we had to find the evidence that showed the link between volcanoes and earthquakes.

The second day we spent some time looking at online resources and planning.

 

Making a geyser

Making a cloud in a bottle

Making a cloud in a jar.

Making a bottle rockets.

 

Recycling

The soil I have been using for my germination comes from Ohakune as it is 'good' soil, without any weeds or contaminants in it. Unfortunately we have a limited supply here so I need to recycle the soil I use. This involves picking out the plants and seeds and drying the soil in an oven overnight to kill off any lingering seeds. Then I can use it again for the next experiment.

A lot of things are recycled here a PFR; containers, paper, labels, string, tins...

Harvesting the humble beetroot

There is a lot of data collected when a beetroot sample is collected.

Count the beetroot in the measured sample plot: 50cm across 3 rows.

The roots sometimes have to be washed and dried of excess mud (we don't want to weigh that!)

Weigh and measure each individual root:

 


The dead leaves are separated and weighed.

And the healthy leaves are weighed.



The healthy leaves have their leaf area measured.





The roots are chopped and put into the ovens to dry.

The healthy leaves are also bagged and put into the oven.

When the roots and leaves are dried, they are weighed.

Finally all the data is entered into a spread sheet.

All to be repeated for the next samples collected in 2 weeks from this paddock.
In the meantime other samples are collected and processed from other paddocks.

There's always plenty to do!

New Experiment

10 April

I started a new experiment today. Beetroot seeds sometimes produce two plants off one seed. My experiment is to see if that makes a difference to their growth.

First I germinated 300 hundred seeds to find the double germinators (one seed with two radicles), then in the glasshouse I set up 30 pots with potting mix. Into 15 pots I planted a double germinator in the middle and four single germinators (one seed with one radicle) around the edge in a square. Into the other 15 pots I planted 15 single germinators in the middle of each pot and four other single ones around each one.

I germinated the seeds by putting them between wet paper towels in a plastic bag.



 

I have put them in the glasshouse to grow. Now I wait...

29 April

The  beetroot plants are starting to grow nicely. Some of the plants missing but the others are showing. Over the next few weeks I will collect growth data, such as the number of true leaves in the centre plant (twice a week), and measuring the length of the second true leaf on each plant (once a week). This will hopefully give me some data after several weeks as to growth patterns.

The true leaves are the ones after the initial cotyledon shows.



 

 

6 May

Today I did a true leaf count of the beetroot plants in the glasshouse. I am only counting the middle leaves as they are the ones that are crucial to this experiment. I am trying to see if there is a difference to plant growth according to whether their seed germinated as a single plant or a double plant. However,  I noticed that when I went to count 3 of the single plants they had become doubles, with two plants growing in the middle.. This tells me that the seed grew a second radicle after I planted it.  I did need to get clarification that the leaves I was counting were true leaves and not the plant’s cotyledon. Most of the plants had 2 leaves so far. I will count again on Friday.

One pot has a very slow growing centre plant. Can you see it?

I use a ruler to measure the second true leaf.

So I know which leaf I will measure I have put a pink tab on its stalk.

 Any experiment with plants takes time for the growth to happen. So a plant scientist will often have several experiments running at the same time.

Measuring the beetroot

4 April

Processing the beetroot sample involves measuring the diameter and individual weights of each roots Luckily they have now connected the scales to the computer so it reads straight onto the recording sheet from the scale. After awhile I found the 'perfect beetroot'. IT was when the number of the weight and diameter were the same at 46.6: 46.6mm and 46.6g!

Destroying the maize field

27 March

 

I went back to maize field today. It has completely dried out and is ready to be cut down. There was talk of using machetes, but fortunately a rotor chopper was found. It does a similar job to a set of hair dresser’s clippers. While one person ran the chopper down cutting two rows at a time, one of the team was either side coaxing the stalks to fall away from the chopper with a couple of long sticks. All the fallen maize then had to be shifted away from the row so it was clear for the chopper to pass by again. It was a tough job physically and we were all knackered by the end. We started at 8.45am and finished at 1.15pm.

Half way...

Tired now!