Changing Environments Experiment

This week, third grade classes visited Mr. Johnson in the science lab to conduct a new experiment and check on their ongoing plant experiment.

Before beginning, the young scientists all wrote down what they predicted would happen. Then Mr. Johnson took a brine shrimp from an eye dropper and put it on a microscope slide. Using a special camera connected to a microscope, he was able to project the camera onto the screen for the whole class to see.

First, the students counted how many times the brine shrimp flapped over 10 seconds in its undisturbed environment and recorded the data. Then Mr. Johnson changed the environment by introducing the chemical caffeine. Caffeine can be found in many places, like soda pop and coffee and will make your heart beat faster. (Mr. Gettig perked up when he heard "coffee" mentioned!)

After introducing a chemical change to the brine shrimp's environment, the students counted how many times the creature flapped over 10 seconds and recorded the data again. They repeated this 3 times to make sure they had a good amount of data to analyze.

The results were amazing! As many students predicted, the introduction of caffeine caused the heart rate of the brine shrimp to increase.

After the brine shrimp experiment, the students observed and recorded data about the plants they are growing. They planted seeds in different kinds of dirt to see how they would grow. Some were planted in good soil, some in sand, some with fertilizer, and some without fertilizer.