Thursday, April 23, 2009

22) Look At Pond Water.

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So, we found out that what makes living creatures interesting, what builds them, what makes brains complicated, are CELLS. It's time to find out what kind of creatures these are! In fact cells are to a certain extent, independent organisms. Let's watch some. Some cells make up a whole animal all by themselves. here are some free living cells. watch Stentor, watch rotifers =1000 cells. watch euglena, a small cell. they can do as many things as ants can!! almost. cells are free living amazing beings.

make a list of activities that cells can do. also 40 or 50 different activities... What ARE these critters. So our next task is to imagine if we can build MICROSCOPIC robots that can do what these free living cells can do, that can do what the cells inside plants and animals can do to come together and make large critters.

and how will our robots reproduce? these cells don't seem to have parts! We need to look deeper. We will need a bigger microscope!

Materials:
eye dropper, tweezers, jars, vials, glass well slides, coverslips, microscopes, hand lense, pond, puddle, stream.. pencils, pens, bio drawing paper

Method:
collect pond critters. find a body of water and collect various bits of water, dead leaves, mats of algae, etc.. use the tweezers, eyedroppers etc.. to get them into jars or vials.

then bring to lab and place in various combinations with tweezer, eyedropper into well slide with enough water to for coverslip. takes practice.

show how to use microscope and lock focus so you don't crash into coverslip.

now the fun: observe and take notes. practice seeing with both eyes open for drawing!

be careful to explore the range of magnifications, convenient hand lens to complex microscope.

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almost native to new york state. teacher and storyteller. email: sow_thistle@yahoo.com