Today Sarah Chang, a junior from Cornell, stopped by to do a presentation on endangered species. She did a great job explaining the causes for many of these species' declines including illegal hunting, habitat destruction, and pollution. Something I enjoyed learning more about was the Karner Blue Butterfly. These used to be common in this area but are now limited to a few areas in the Albany area. She also spoke of the great success story that is the Bald Eagle. I was glad to hear that many students have been to Montezuma Wildlife Refuge near Auburn and some have even seen Eagles there.

Saturday the Sisterhood of Science traveled to Taughannock Falls State Park for a guided tour of the local geology of that area. Despite the rain it was still a good time. Special thanks to the Museum of the Earth for leading the tour. The Sisterhood of Science is a special program for Groton 7th and 8th grade girls. It is run by the Cornell Nanobiotechnology Center.

Today we looked at onion cells under high and low power. We learned that the cells can vary from 200 to around 1000 microns long. Our low power field of view held about 100 cells. Can you imagine how many cells must be on the average large pizza with onions?? Those rings are much thicker too. We were dealing with a film that was only one cell layer thick. Remember these labs are due Monday. Please do a nice job answering the questions.

Cell Organelles

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Here is the Powerpoint from today. The format didn't translate properly but all content should be there.

Today we were fortunate enough to have Cornell student, David Zielnicki in to share his knowledge of invasive plants and animals. You guys impressed me with what you already knew. I realized part-way through the day that last year's trip to Lime Hollow probably helped you collect that previous knowledge. I hope everyone enjoyed today's class. Being educated and aware of this problem will help limit the spread in the future. We have more speakers coming this month to talk about bird migrations, turtles, and endangered species.

Here are some images taken today of our brown trout. The top shows the alevin stage of development, which all of our trout are currently in. You can see the yolk sac, which is the the source of 100% of the fish's food supply right now for the next couple weeks. The bottom photo shows red blood cells traveling through capillaries, delivering oxygen and nutrients to all of the body cells.

What a busy day today in class. First it was Halloween, so I dressed up as Ms. Bassette and Koda made an appearance. We got our brown trout eggs...about 70 of them. They are all in the Alevin stage of development. Lastly we got good looks at rotifers under the microscopes. This micrograph was taken under low power (100x) on our new Jenco microscopes with a Moticam 1000 It was a pretty successful day. Remember we have a microscope test Monday. See the previous post for good review games.

This is the 400th post on Grotonsciencegeek. Thanks to everyone that has viewed and left comment over the past 3 years. Today we spent in the lab looking at pond water under the microscopes. TYLER and BEN get a good look through one of our brand new microscopes that Groton received late last year through a grant. The second picture shows a dragonfly nymph that was found by SHYASIA D.
Today we also did the final preparations for our trout tank. We will be receiving about 100 Brown Trout eggs on Friday to raise and release into the Owasco lake watershed. Here, REID B. and KELLY B. do a pH test to make sure the trout have a safe transition. Ongoing coverage from ours and other schools can be found here.

We've been working with microscopes in class and CALI G. brought a really good website to my attention. You may want to check out these games as you begin to study for next week's microscope test.

Game 1
Game 2
Game 3
Game 4

This week we started our microscope unit. Here, McKayla and Peyton are in the middle of the "e" lab where they learned that the microscope produces images that are upside down and backwards from the original. Remember we have a quiz on Friday and many cool microscope labs coming up in the next couple weeks.

This is a reminder that Saturday is Insectapalooza 2008 at Cornell University. This is a great way to learn more about insects and see an amazing diversity of the world's most numerous animal. If you happen to go make sure you bring back proof that you went so I can give you extra credit. Hopefully I'll see some of you there.

A campus map is available here.

Soon to come to 7th grade science... brown trout! Groton is one of 6 local schools that will be participating in the Trout Unlimited "Trout in the Classroom" project. We will raise roughly 120 brown trout from eggs in a tank and release them into Owasco Inlet in the spring. All of the equipment and tank were provided through a multi-thousand dollar grant awarded by the Triad Foundation. Groton has received nearly $1000 in equipment for this program, which will culminate with a spring field trip to Cayuga Lake on the Floating Classroom. Mr. Giroux, Mr. Rhoads, and Bill Foster (of the Floating Classroom) will be working very closely with us on this project. We'll be setting up the tank tonight and the eggs will be arriving by the end of this month!

Another day of classification. Today we classified creatures and created dichotomous keys for several common critters.

Wow! Look at the size of the winter squash that 9th period picked from the garden. Not only did we harvest about 12 of these guys from the school garden but we also picked 2 big bags of fresh carrots for the cafeteria.

Today we classified Teddy Grahams by certain characteristics much like how scientists classify living things into categories. Above, SARAH, CHRIS, and SHYASIA show off their Teddys.

We've been discussing the classification of living things in class and to start out this chapter we did a short activity on classifying nuts and bolts into groups based of similar and different characteristics. Above, JOSH, TRISTIN, and ZACH work on their assortment.

Here is something I wanted to throw out to those of you that are creative and innovative. Google, the company that runs the world, is offering millions of dollars to people that have good ideas. They want to fund your good idea. There aren't many rules except that your idea has to improve the lives of many people. CNN has a story about this. If you have an idea you can submit it to Google. Feel free to come in at Rec. if you want to discuss your idea and maybe I can help you.

Groton Central School has been named the Go Green Initiative School of the Week. Treehugger also had a small write-up about this. Thank you to everyone that recycles their papers and composts during lunch and breakfast. Together we're making Groton one of the "greenest" schools in the state! Be sure to check out the excellent write-up that Zoe Francis from Go Green did through the first link above.

Today we picked some of the carrots and probably the last picking of summer squash and string beans for the year. Hopefully everyone is selecting the fresh produce at lunch if you buy. Be on the lookout for more carrots this week and next.