Thursday night we headed to Rohrbach Beer Hall on Railroad Street to be part of the University of Rochester’s Thinkers and Drinkers event. The Thinkers and Drinkers group is traditionally made up of science graduate students who go out to a bar once in a while to mingle with the general public and practice describing their science in way that makes sense to someone who isn’t working on it every day.

We had decided that our primary goal as education students would be to talk with people about what they thought about scientists and science education. We figured we would also work in talking about our plans for the science camp at Sodus if the conversation went in that direction. Our secondary goals were to interact with the community, grow together as a group, and have a great time!

I’d have to say I was not optimistic that interrupting people’s evenings would go over well, but everyone we spoke with was warm and welcoming and enthusiastic. Although we did have our goals of discussing science and science education, and we did learn quite a bit about what people thought about those things, I selfishly had a wonderful time talking to various folks about everything from the importance of being part of a union to where the get the best Italian food, Puerto Rican food, and pizza around. And, tripe. Somehow I also had a long conversation about tripe.

Last Tuesday, it was time for us to meet with some 5th and 6th graders in Sodus to invite them to help us improve our experiment this summer at science camp.

In preparation, The Loyal to Soil Team (Lisa, Gavin, and I) made a short video on Powtoon that described the current status of our project and asked the students about what they thought we should do next:

The two other groups of our colleagues, Stink Squad and Ex-STREAM Team, made videos too:

We had so much fun working with the students who spent an hour with us excitedly talking about science, proposing new questions to explore, and recounting how their lives were related to the experiments we could do.  There was so much laughter and joy in the room.

I was also extremely impressed by my colleagues. We are just starting our journey to becoming teachers and have a lot to learn, but each person clearly loved being there and interacting with the kids. I love being part of this group!

🙂

As you may have guessed from my last post, our soil testing did not go quite as planned. We planned to test the soil for nitrogen (N), phosphorous (P), and potassium (K) because those are the main nutrients used in fertilizers, and the lab already had some kits to test for them. We also wanted to test pH, mostly because we had a kit for that too!

Here’s what the phosphate test looks like. Note the tubes with solutions of various intensities of blue. The goal is to mix a sample with the chemicals in the kit and see how the sample changes color. Those tubes are the reference tubes. Each intensity of blue corresponds with a level of phosphate. Match your mixed sample to the correct reference tube, and you’ve got your phosphate level!

Easy, right? Well…not so much…

The problem was that all the kits we had were to test WATER, not soil. We thought, “Hey, no problem! We’ll just soak the soil in the water for about an hour. Then, certainly the nutrients seep out of the soil into the water. We can then filter the soil out of the water and test the water!”

Easy, right? Well…not so much…

Soaking the soil in water for an hour pretty much just made mud. And, when we tried to filter the water out of the mud, we ended up with…mud in a cone of filter paper.

We tried to use the kits to do the tests anyway with liquid we sucked off the top of the mud.

Easy, right? Well…not so much…

The mixed samples turned bluish (maybe?), and the sample from the “good” field was different from that from the “bad” field, but neither mixed sampled turned to a blue that matched any of the reference samples.

In an effort to get some data we could use, we then tested some of our muddy water using some test strips we had to test for phosphate and pH.

We were excited to see that the soil samples from the “bad” field matched each other, and the soil samples from the “good” field matched each other. Moreover, the “bad” samples were different from the “good” samples. However, because the water soak method clearly wasn’t a reliable approach for evaluating the soil, we did not trust the results .

So, the main thing we learned is that we will order a real soil testing kit before we do this experiment with middle school students in July. We had a lot of fun figuring that out, though!

🙂

 

Our preparations for a science camp in Sodus this July have begun!

Our goal for the camp is to do an experiment with the students that they will feel connected to and interested in. To get some insight into what kind of topics kids in Sodus are interested in, Gavin and Ellie accompanied our fearless leader, April, to a meeting with Sodus students, school leaders, and farming experts to ask them what they wanted to know more about.

We learned that one curious girl wanted to know why the apples she gets at school sometimes taste like chemicals.

So, Gavin, Lisa, and I teamed up to think about how we could test whether soil quality affects the quality of the produce grown there. Last night (5/31) was our test run at Burnap’s Farm.

Local folks, you’ll want to head out there to check out their Farm Market and Garden Cafe. Please take me with you when you go.

It was too early in the season to pick any produce – we expect to be able to actually pick fruit in July with the kids – but we decided we would take soil samples from two different fields and count the number of strawberry flowers and budding berries in a 5-foot section of plants. Does healthier soil produce more berries?

Here is a look at the farm:

We had brought trowels to take soil samples, but Ed Burnap (born in Brooklyn!) showed us the proper way to take a sample and then let us borrow his coring instrument. (We have great video of him explaining it all, but the file size is too big to upload here…unless I am doing it wrong…which is possible…)

Gavin was a natural with the soil samples.

We ended up with two samples from each field: one field Ed deemed “bad,” and the other he deemed “good.”

Lisa took some near-infrared pictures of the plants that we hope we can use to assess plant health. (Healthier plants have more chlorophyll so reflect more near-infrared energy. Learn more from NASA.)

So much fun! Here is a picture of me, Lisa, and Gavin with Kendra (Ed and Jan’s daughter who now runs the farm), Ed, and Jan.

As an extra bonus, we also learned about their hydroponic system for growing strawberries and lettuce…

…as well as their special approach to growing raspberries.

At the end of the evening, we headed back to the science room and laid out our soil samples to dry overnight.

In the next post, you’ll get to hear about how our analysis of the samples went. (Spoiler alert…we learned a lot from the experience!)

😛

 

 

 

After an exciting first week of classes, the Get Real! Science program at the Warner School of Education at the University of Rochester is…getting real.

Throughout my undergraduate and previous graduate career, I was notorious for falling asleep during lectures, but I haven’t had to struggle to keep my eyes open once this week. I have rarely had such engaging conversations with so many thoughtful and diligent people, and this week I had the opportunity to discuss and ponder and question with my new colleagues four days in a row!

As a first step to kicking my brain back into gear and explicitly describing what lies ahead for this blog, I describe my blogging goals below. I look forward to the learning and growth that lies ahead!

🙂

Share how science education can work for everyone

After reading just two papers and preparing for one project, I can already see how changing science education is possible. Even as a scientist who takes pride in being able to discuss scientific topics in a way that a wide variety of people can understand, I have had difficulty imagining what it would take to make science education engaging and approachable to students from all cultural and academic backgrounds. I intend to use this blog to share stories and insights from what I learn so that others can also see how Get Real! Science can happen!

Explore ideas with intention and accountability

In today’s age of rapid-fire information and short attention spans, I am often concerned about how little time and energy I devote to thinking about important topics. It is all too easy to review a soundbite or read someone else’s review of an event, agree or disagree, and move on with my day. I intend to use this blog to explicitly explore topics and what I think about them.

Start conversations that promote change

I think that a great deal of conflict can be resolved and many problems can be solved with constructive communication. I also think that it is difficult for many people, including myself, to debate and disagree while really listening to and respecting others with a conflicting view.  We focus on winning instead of reaching the best conclusion. Often, even if we successfully manage to have a respectful disagreement, we dismiss a dissenting opinion and end with an “agree to disagree” result.  I intend to use this blog to pose questions about controversial topics and carefully analyze opposing viewpoints.