Week Eleven
November 18, 2013
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Water: The
water in our ecosystem is still clear. Even though we poked a hole in our ecosystem last week, the water level does not seem to have gone down any. We still have condensation in the top and bottom of the bottle.
Elodea: The
elodea is still floating in the water and looks very healthy. In fact, it is really the only part of this ecosystem that seems to have survived in the environment.
Snails: The snails are both sitting on the gravel at the bottom. They are not stuck to the side of the bottle, which makes us think they may be deceased.
Daphnia: The
daphnia are still not visible. The exoskeletons are not even apparent anymore. We believe they are long gone.
Seeds/Leaves: All of our leaves are completely dead. Our plant stalks have shriveled and are turning yellow/brown. The hole we poked in the bottle does not seem to have improved the health of our ecosystem.
Soil: There are still some roots that are visible, but we do not think there are any new roots. It seems our ecosystem has run its course.
Final note: Our ecosystem experiment was quite interesting. We can definitely see how these closed ecosystems could be beneficial in our classrooms. In a class of younger students, we would consider using one class ecosystem for observation rather than individual ecosystems; however, older students would likely benefit from making and observing their own/group ecosystems. We believe that if we had added more soil to the system and/or added fewer seeds, our plants would have fared much better because there would be a sufficient amount of nutrients to keep the bean plants healthy. The bottom of our ecosystem looks healthy, leading us to believe that the top half of the system was malnourished once the soil was depleted of nutrients. Next time around, we would add more soil, observe for a longer period of time post poking a hole in the ecosystem/poke the hole as soon as the plants started to take a turn for the worst, and added more daphnia. If we were working with a class of older students, they could further investigate their own questions pertaining to the completion of the ecosystem project (i.e., How does the amount of soil affect the growth of the plants, why does the elodea seem to be thriving, why did the daphnia disappear so quickly, what could be added to the ecosystem instead of the dapnia, etc.)
Week Eleven
November 18, 2013
Water: The
water in our ecosystem is still clear. Even though we poked a hole in our ecosystem last week, the water level does not seem to have gone down any. We still have condensation in the top and bottom of the bottle.
Elodea: The
elodea is still floating in the water and looks very healthy. In fact, it is really the only part of this ecosystem that seems to have survived in the environment.
Snails: The snails are both sitting on the gravel at the bottom. They are not stuck to the side of the bottle, which makes us think they may be deceased.
Daphnia: The
daphnia are still not visible. The exoskeletons are not even apparent anymore. We believe they are long gone.
Seeds/Leaves: All of our leaves are completely dead. Our plant stalks have shriveled and are turning yellow/brown. The hole we poked in the bottle does not seem to have improved the health of our ecosystem.
Soil: There are still some roots that are visible, but we do not think there are any new roots. It seems our ecosystem has run its course.
Final note: Our ecosystem experiment was quite interesting. We can definitely see how these closed ecosystems could be beneficial in our classrooms. In a class of younger students, we would consider using one class ecosystem for observation rather than individual ecosystems; however, older students would likely benefit from making and observing their own/group ecosystems. We believe that if we had added more soil to the system and/or added fewer seeds, our plants would have fared much better because there would be a sufficient amount of nutrients to keep the bean plants healthy. The bottom of our ecosystem looks healthy, leading us to believe that the top half of the system was malnourished once the soil was depleted of nutrients. Next time around, we would add more soil, observe for a longer period of time post poking a hole in the ecosystem/poke the hole as soon as the plants started to take a turn for the worst, and added more daphnia. If we were working with a class of older students, they could further investigate their own questions pertaining to the completion of the ecosystem project (i.e., How does the amount of soil affect the growth of the plants, why does the elodea seem to be thriving, why did the daphnia disappear so quickly, what could be added to the ecosystem instead of the dapnia, etc.)
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