PlantingScience Fall 2016 Session

Class Info

This information will be needed when you are creating your groups for PlantingScience for this session. Complete this form and hang on to it until you create your group with your liaison before the fall sessions starts. If you are working on more than one investigation theme, please complete one template for each theme.

Goals/Big picture:

The “Celery Challenge” seems straight forward, but there are many factors influencing how the tissue will respond.  My primary goal is for students to realize that scientific research is not “do the lab and you’re done,” but rather a series of tests and revisions to get closer to an answer to your question.  Ultimately I’d like to see each group identify and test at least 2-3 different factors that together increase the amount of bending they are able to generate in a piece of celery stalk tissue.

The course is introductory botany for majors. The students have had diffusion/osmosis in the pre-req. principles of biology course and will be doing growth and cells/tissues a bit later in the semester.  

Students will be familiar with osmosis from a previous course so I’m looking for students to apply that knowledge to the celery challenge.  But it will also be a discovery tool to integrate this will the response of different cell types in tissues.  They are familiar with controlled, replicated experiments and using basic descriptive statistics and simple statistical tests.  They have access to Image-J for digital analysis, including angle measurement, with instructions in the resource guide of their lab manual although we will not have used it in the class.

Important dates and times:

Start registration on 20 Feb with required first posting of brainstorming on 24 Feb.

Final report posting by 28 April.

Spring break is the week of 20-24 March

Formal lab is 12-3 Fridays, but the project is meant to be done out-of-class and students have access to the lab 7am-9pm M-F and with permission on weekends. 

Students will be using their own computers so access is 24/7