This morning I executed a ton of biology work, and it's a good thing too, because I got a lot done and did two super fun labs! Since this is the only course I'm taking at home (remind me to explain the whole hybrid school set up to you sometime!) I don't have a class to share my fascinating science facts with. Ergo, I am forced to post them on the internet. (Which is actually quite delightful, when you think about it.)
 |
| Me, cleaning my knife. How sinister! (Actually, it's proof of our neat I am.) |
 |
| The cut up fruit laid out, nice and neat. |
 |
| Me, magnifying my favorite fruit! |
 |
| My lab all set up! |
 |
| My data. As you can see in the far right bottom corner, I had difficulty describing the shape of a pear, so I just drew it. |
 |
| It's breakfast! YUM YUM YUM! |
The first project I did this morning was a fruit lab!I basically cut up the fruit and described them in a table, finding similarities and differences between the five delicious specimens I laid out before me. The banana was the coolest, even if it was the mushiest. I made everything seem quite professional. I even wiped off the table! (Yes, I know. My parents SHOULD get me a car!!!)
As you can see from the last two photographs, the end result was a chart full of data and a tasty breakfast for me. The scraps and peels went in our compost bucket. A compost bucket is a great way to give back to the earth, since we take so much out of it. Plus, it’ll help you grow tasty vegetables! We throw all of our organic food waste to the garden and all of our processed food scraps to our chickens. Basically it’s a natural form of recycling! The chickens eat the food and produce new food (Eggs! Which are, if you are wondering, MUCH healthier than those potato chips!) Of course the chicken’s main diet is feeding pellets, but we like to feed them a little treat every once in a while. It’s better than wasting our precious junk food, after all! If you are curious, the chickens also eat bugs, snakes and lizards they find in the woods behind our house. Buuuut that’s nasty. So, lets talk about compost. Which is, slightly LESS nasty, fyi. Compost decomposes and the vitamins and minerals go back into the soil so they can be drawn out again and put in next years crops! We also put manure down from (you guessed it!) the chickens! We even use the poop from our sheep and goats. Sheep manure is actually the best because you don’t have to age it before putting it on the garden. Ageing decomposes some of the stronger substances in the animal waste, so it doesn’t “burn” the plants. But the enzymes in the sheep’s digestive system are so strong that the poop is mild enough we can put it right on top of our garden.
How did we get to be talking about such nasty things anyway? Oh right, I forgot, it’s a science post! I don’t HATE science, but it is a lot of work. I sort of like it, but at the same time, it’s like that annoying red nail polish you keep telling yourself that you’ll throw away one of these days. Science is like compost, nasty and hard to look at but beneficial in the long run.
The OTHER project I made today was a Dichotomous Key for Writing Utensils. This is simply a fancy name for a classification system for a few pens, pencils and also a highlighter.
 |
| My lovely victims |
While I won't bore you will the key (since it is rather dry) I did want to tell you about it so I wouldn't feel like I worked for nothing.
Peace Out,
Mary
No comments:
Post a Comment