28 September 1999: Karlene Joseph (Lane Tech)
showed us a part of a video tape of a Star Trek show. The characters were involved in a discussion of what constitutes life, with an android (synthetic "human") wondering about him-it-her self. Karlene then got us involved in a very interesting discussion of what constitutes life and how ethics, science, and religious beliefs are all involved in such life issues as cloning, artificial reproduction of human cells, etc. She certainly showed us how her students can be motivated; we certainly were! Great!

26 October 1999: Eartha Sherrill (Williams School)
handed out black construction paper (about 14x17 sq in), small cards (about 2x3 sq in) of different colors, piece of chalk, page listing objects under City Ecosystems (mice, grasses, cats, etc) and Pond Ecosystems (minnows, algae, frogs, etc). Looking at City Ecosystems, we entered on the small green cards the name of each "producer" (grass, weeds, vegetables, etc) The cards were placed in a line across the bottom of the black paper. Then on yellow cards we entered the first level names (consumers - mice, grasshoppers, etc.)  The idea of food chain was introduced, and the web of interconnections between various living things in the ecosystem. A beautiful way to analyze and see those interconnections, and to gain insight into what an ecosystem is!

15 February 2000: Karlene Joseph (Lane Tech HS)
(handout) had us make "birds" of paper, soda straws and tape. We discovered that some of the next generation (mutant) birds flew farther, some a shorter average distance. If flying to an oasis is needed for survival, a mutant selection will occur. A wonderful way to understand evolutionary process and relation to survival! The detail in the handout was very well done, and made it most useful. Excellent!

29 February 2000: Ed Scanlon (Morgan Park HS)
showed us how to construct an Analytical Key for Identification. (handout)
Directions: Group the 30 organisms according to some characteristic and then subdivide each group according to different states of that characteristic. Students are given a sheet of 30 Whatsits (drawings of obviously related organisms). By the end of the activity, students must have assigned a 2 word name to each Whatsits and written out a classification scheme that will give each Whatsits a unique name. Ed took us through this in some depth, and we really learned something! Thanks, Ed

02 May 2000: Kim Baker (Fairfield Academy)
did "something different." We each received a page titled "Don't Use it All Up," and on it we were asked to list as many as 15 uses for water. Then she passed out plastic shoe boxes containing 7 sponges (different sizes). Each group put 2.5 cups of water into the box. Then we added the sponges one at a time, each sponge representing a different use of water. The original water level, representing the height of the water table, decreased with each sponge added. We then discussed how water resources can be conserved, as we squeezed out the sponges to bring the "water table" nearly back to its original level. A pretty analogy and a good way to get your students to conserve.

10 October 2000: Pam Moy (Morgan Park HS)
had an "eye opener" for us - she placed on the table an "alien fetus" in a jar. Question: Could this be possible? The point was to get us to practice scientific inquiry by examination of the "specimen" and the give-and-take of the discussion it provoked. It worked, Pam. Thanks!

05 December 2000: Chris Etapa (Gunsaulus Academy)
(handout: 1997 Keep America Beautiful, Inc. - pp 47-50. "Understanding Waste Management.") Garbage Pizza - She told us that this is a recycling activity. It lists Objectives, Method, Materials, Vocabulary, Procedure. For example, Method states that "Students will construct a garbage pizza, a three-dimensional pie chart, which represents the MSW (Municipal Solid Waste) discarded in the United States; each slice of the pizza will represent a different solid waste category." Students bring in items from home such as these:

• Paper (newsprint, boxes, wrappers)
• Yard waste (grass, sticks, leaves, potpourri)
• Plastics (disposable food service products - cups, plates, cutlery, bread bag clips, jug lids, miniature toys)
• Metals (paper clips, staples, aluminum can pull tabs, nuts and bolts)
• Wood (tooth picks, building blocks, cedar chips, golf tees)
• Food (egg shells, pasta, pretzels, dry cereal),
• Glass (marbles, sea glass)
• Other (rubber bands, candle, washers).

For the "pizza crust" you can use homemade play dough (see instructions), spread it on a 9 inch aluminum pie plate. Use the pie chart showing the percent of the various MSW component as the basis for cutting it into the appropriate number and size of slices, and bake until hard. Then paint "pizza sauce" (red tempera paint) onto the slices. Glue the waste items onto their corresponding pizza pie-chart slices. You could use plastic beads for waste "glass," and macaroni for "food waste," etc.

This brings home very graphically that the biggest slice by far is the paper category of waste (37.9 %), with yard waste next (14.6 %).

Among other things, students learn that Garbage refers only to organic or food waste thrown away. Trash represents broken or worthless things (rubbish).

So be careful how you sort your waste stuff! It's the first step to helping with waste disposal. Chris, thanks for the good ideas!

13 February 2001: Erma Lee (Williams School)             Estimation
Erma had three containers, each containing a different kind of dried beans [or peas]; the sizes were "small", "regular", and "large".

• We took a spoonful of each kind, and put them into separate compartments of a Styrofoam™ food tray, and we put an orange into the fourth compartment.
• We peeled the orange, saving the peelings, and separated one section from the orange.
• We then quickly estimated the number of each kind of bean that was on our plates., as well as the number of sections left on the orange, from which we had just removed a segment, and the number of pieces of orange peel.
• The estimates were then collected.
• Next we put the section back into the orange, and re-covered the top half of the orange with pieces of peeling.  Then, we estimated how many pieces of orange peel were required for this.
• Then, we removed this segment again, and estimated the number of seeds inside the segment.
• Next, we bit the orange, and estimated how much was left.
• Then, we counted and recovered the number of beans, the number of orange sections, and the number of pieces of orange peeling.
• We compared and recorded our estimates of the number of each type of bean, and the total numbers.
• We traced our hand on a sheet of paper, and on a second sheet we traced our foot.
• For one of the three types of beans, we estimated how many (placed end-to-end) would be needed to go around the tracing.  Then, we covered the perimeter with beans, and compared our estimates with the actual numbers.

At some point in the experiment we ran out of beans. [Be sure to get a plentiful supply when you do this experiment.]

24 September 2002: Carl Martikean [Wallace HS, Gary] Teaching of Science from a Humanistic Perspective
Carl raised the following questions:

• Should animals with human gene sequences spliced into their own DNA be considered human? Why or why not?
• Why are chimpanzees immune to the HIV virus? Is it possible that there was an HIV virus among chimps, say, two million years ago, devastating the population at that time, so that only the few virus-resistant chimps survived? Why or why not?
• The crusades brought rats and the bubonic plague back to Europe from the Mediterranean basin, resulting in untold human agony and depopulation in Europe. Did this resultant depopulation serve to enhance the value of human life, leading inevitably to specialization of labor, banking and commerce, inherited wealth, leisure time, and [among those fortunate few] time and resources for scientific inquiry?  Does science drive society, or does science drive science?

08 October 2002: Ed Scanlon [Morgan Park HS, Biology]     Capture-Recapture Sampling Method [Handout]
This method is used for estimating the size of animal populations. This exercise presents a popular method useful for estimating the population size of a single species of highly mobile animals, such as most vertebrates. Some literature refers to this method as the Lincoln-Peterson method.

Sampling
• You must catch as many individuals from a population as you can within a specified amount of time. These individuals will be marked and then released back into their habitat. This is the first sampling.
• You must give these creatures time to move back into the main population. After this time, you will go back and capture more of the creatures from the same population. This is the second sampling.
• There is a relationship between the numbers of recaptured individuals (they are the marked ones) to the total population, and so the total population can be estimated.

N:  This is the total number of individuals in a population
M: This is the number of individuals in the first sample-- you must mark this, then return them back into the environment.
n:    This is the number of individuals in the second sample.
R:   This is the number of marked individuals in the second sample.

Assumptions
• You must take random samples.
• All individuals have the same possibility of being captured.
• There must be no change in the size of the population between the first and second samplings.
• The marked individuals will distribute themselves equally into the entire population.
• Marking an individual must not make it easier to recapture.

Marking: After catching, mark and release the individuals as soon as possible. Use a method to mark the individuals that will not come off or adversely hurt them.

Procedure
• First Sampling
  People need to form a line across the sampling area. All need to walk forward at the same rate and collect the species being studied (toothpicks). After 5 minutes, all the people will gather together, count the toothpicks, and then mark them. Give all the toothpicks to the teacher. The teacher will distribute them back into the environment.
• Second Sampling
  The students will again walk the area and collect the species. After 5 minutes, all will gather and count the second sampling noting how many are marked and how many are not marked. They can now use the formulas to estimate the size of the population.

Great Job, Ed! and all for the price a a box of flat toothpicks!

05 November 2002: Estellvenia Sanders [Chicago Vocational HS]       Bilingual  Biology
Estellvenia put a list of science terms on the whiteboard ---  Acid, base, etc, --- then faced us, and began shouting and flailing her arms around! (I was worried and started to go for help until I realized she was repeating the words on the list accompanied by signing the same words.)  She then used the words in two mini-lectures, first in English then in Spanish and told us about new educational challenges at her school as the population becomes more culturally (and linguistically) diverse. But we aren't worried, it was clear she would be able to cope! Thanks for sharing with us, Estellvenia.

19 November 2002: Brenda Daniel [Fuller Elementary]        The Future World of Biodiversity
Brenda gave her very first SMILE miniteach presentation [welcome aboard, Brenda!!] by having us fill in a "pyramid" concerning biodiversity issues, putting the most important issue at the top, less important issues on the second row, still less important issues on the third row, and least important issues on the fourth and bottom row.  The issues were take from the following list:

04 May 2004: Ron Tuinstra [Illiana Christian HS, chemistry]         Environmental Science Activities
Ron distributed these four activities that he had personally developed and used in class as Soil Laboratory exercises, which can be performed with soil samples brought to class by students:

• Activity A: Infiltration
  1. Obtain ring stand, filter paper, and beaker.  Place filter paper in funnel.
  2. Fill funnel about 1/2 full with dirt.  Level the dirt in the filter paper.  Be sure to keep the dirt below the top of the filter paper by 3 cm.
  3. Place empty beaker under lower end of funnel.
  4. Measure 20 ml of water with a graduated cylinder.  Slowly and carefully pour all the water into the dirt in the funnel, taking care not to let the water rise above the top of the filter paper.
  5. Start timing for 5 minutes.  Measure and record the amount of water in the beaker under the funnel at the end of 5 minutes.
  6. Compare your results with other groups in the class.
• Activity B: Water holding capacity
  1. Obtain clean dry beaker; 150 ml or 250 ml capacity.  Weigh and record mass of your empty beaker.
  2. Measure out two teaspoons of your dirt into the beaker. Weigh and record the mass of the dirt and beaker. Subtract the mass of the empty beaker to determine the mass of dirt in the beaker.
  3. Place the beaker and dirt on a hot plate for 10 minutes.  Remove the beaker from the hot plate, let it cool to touch, and record mass of beaker and dirt.  Subtract the mass of the empty beaker to determine the mass of dry dirt.
  4. The difference of the original mass of the dirt minus the dry mass is the mass of water driven out of the dirt.
  5. Divide the mass of the water by the original weight of the dirt.  Multiply that number by 100 to calculate the percent water in your dirt.
  6. Record all numbers on your lab sheet.
• Activity C: Soil structures
  1. Obtain a dissecting microscope, a glass petri dish, and a dissecting needle.
  2. Place a spoon full of your dirt onto the petri dish. Place it on the dissecting scope and observe the dirt.  Using the dissecting needle, try to identify insects, humus, sand, silt, and clay in your dirt.
  3. Record all your observations on your worksheet.  Be sure to list any organisms you observe in your dirt?
  4. What particles could you identify? What insects or organisms, if any, did you observe?  What color is your soil?
• Activity D: Soil particles
  1. Obtain a clean dry beaker, 500 ml or 1000 ml capacity.  Place 2 teaspoons of dirt into the beaker.
  2. Add water until your beaker is about 1/2 full.  Mix well with a plastic spoon.  Let settle for a minute or two.
  3. How much material is floating on top the water?  What do you think it is?
  4. Observe the color and cloudiness of the water in the beaker.  On a scale of 1-4, with 1 being clear and 4 opaque, rate the cloudiness of your water.  Record this observation on your worksheet.
  5. Note the presence of sediment at the bottom of the beaker.  Carefully pour out the water from the beaker, using care not to lose the sediment.
  6. What does the sediment look like?  What material was removed when you poured the water and left the sediment?  How is this like soil erosion?  
• Additional Questions
  1. Based upon the soil types you learned in class (loam, sandy, silty, clay type), how would you classify your soil sample?
  2. What would you estimate the percentages are in your sample for sand, silt, and clay?  Compare this with loam: (40 % sand;  40% silt; 20% clay).
  3. How many different organisms, if any, did you find in your soil?
  4. What would you add to your soil, if anything, to make it a better soil?

Great stuff! Thanks, Ron.

28 September 2004: Chris Etapa  [Gunsaulus Academy]           The Ecosphere
Chris' son bought an "ecosphere" for her for about $20 (oddly, at an electronics store). It is a glass globe that is sealed. It is 3-4 inches (8-10 cm)  in diameter. It contains brine shrimp (5) and algae and about 6 snails.  The system is self contained and self sustaining. It is about 3/4 filled with water. The algae make oxygen for respiration of the snails and shrimp which make CO₂ for the algae. The algae presumably make biomass to support the growth of the shrimp and snails. Enough nutrients (presumably for algal growth) are included in the solution to support at least 2 years of sustainability. We enjoyed passing the ecosphere around and examining it close up.  Very interesting, Chris!

07 December 2004: Mary Lucy Adetunji    [Gale Elementary School]     The Five Senses (Handout)
Sister Mary had us do activities that she uses with her kindergarten students.  These activities were interesting to us; we learned how observational science can be taught to students at an early age.  

1. We looked around at various objects with and without sunglasses and noted the differences in what we saw with and without them.
2. We repeated the first exercise, looking through a toy “fly's eye” [http://www.toysandmore.com.au/item.cfm?item=OPL+MIS+FLYEYE&CFID=77275&CFToken=17074203]  that divides a scene into many different small versions of that scene, as well as looking at objects using a hand lens.

08 March 2005: Wanda Pitts [Douglas Elementary School]            The Straw Balance and Gravity
Wanda started out by asking the question, "What is gravity?" It is the force that pulls two objects together. We then received a handout from Wanda with the instructions for building the straw balance using the materials that Wanda supplied (ruler, drinking straw, marking pen, scissors, small index card, straight pin, and two wooden blocks of equal height and not as wide as the length of straw).  When the balance is level, both gravity and torque are at work, the gravity producing the force on each "pan" (ie, card), and the distance from the center of the straw to the pan multiplied by the force producing the torque, which balances the pans. But if the distance from center to pan is the same on each side, the balance will directly measure the force of gravity (the weight) of whatever is placed on the pans.

We then did this with small pieces of index card of unknown mass/weight on one pan, measuring their mass/weight in units of "punch holes", pieces of paper made with a paper punch, placed on the other pan. At the balance point, the masses and weights on each side were equal.

How does gravity relate to Biology/Chemistry?
• Pat: The balance we just made is of great use in chemistry, in measuring out amounts of known chemicals accurately.
• Ben: What happens in zero gravity to people?
• Ed: Fluids are released from the tissues, so that the astronauts must urinate very soon after getting to zero g.
• Ben: Long periods of time in zero g can lead to muscle weakness.
  Geotropism in plants: upon germination the shoot grows away from the center of gravity of the Earth (towards the air/light), and the root grows in the other direction, toward the center of gravity; this ensures that the root will be in the ground and the shoot in the light.

Good stuff, Wanda!

15 November 2005: Ed Scanlon (Morgan Park HS, biology)            Evolution
Ed started with the following handout:

Questions of Evolution
• What makes us different?
• Does the size of ONE organ make a significant difference to set us apart from the rest of the biological world?
• Is the difference between us and all other creatures psychological and not physical?
• Have we evolved as far as we can go? If not, how else could we change (organically) for the better?
• What makes us more biologically important than any other creature?
• You have come here from another galaxy to study the creatures that inhabit Earth. What do you see that makes you think Homo sapien sapiens are different?
• Do you think we are different because we are the first organisms to be intelligent enough to change our environment so that if fits our needs and destroys the needs of other organisms?