Our class had such a terrific day today! Ms. Goode, an environmental consultant, came to visit us today. Ms. Goode was Mrs. LeCroy's college roommate at Winthrop University. She works in Columbia, and drove all that way to visit us! We learned so much today. Take a look at all the fun we had today.
We all brought in our own soil samples from home, but we needed some samples to compare them to from around the school. Safety is important, so she wore her typical clothes and safety gear (helmet, bright vest/shirt, steel toes boots, safety glasses, etc.) while taking samples from the school grounds.
After placing things to represent cow manure, chemicals, fertilizers, dirt from construction, oils, litter, etc., we made it rain! (Spray bottles) When it rains in a water shed, all the water flows to one water source. The water on the land flows to the rivers, and the rivers and water on hills flow to the lake.
To help us understand how to prevent erosion (soil conservation), we did an experiment. In every experiment, you have controls, or things that you keep the same. You also have one variable. This way, you can truly see what affect the variable has. We had two identical containers, the same amount of soil, watered it the same amount for a week, and changed only one thing. All of those were constants, but our variable was the grass we planted. In one container, we planted fast-growing grass seed, and the other we did not plant anything. We then poured 500 mL in each container to see what would happen.
It is important to understand this so that you can plant soil in places to prevent erosion. Also, it is important to understand where there is loose soil with no plants (like construction sites), there will also be lots of pollution from the loose soil to the water. Many fish and other aquatic organisms cannot breathe as well in dirty water. Most people don't think about something natural such as dirt as pollution, but too much of something where it doesn't belong can be harmful to that environment!
We also placed Vaseline in three lids and placed them outside. We were trying to see what kinds of particles were in the air. Things like gases are hard to see, but the particles that fall from the air can collect in the lids with vaseline. Two samples were placed in our outdoor classroom. They had very few particles, and they were smaller in size. The third was placed in an area where brush was being burned and grass was being cut. We found ashes, pieces of leaves and grass, and well as other particles in this sample. This really helped us think about the quality of the air in different places and circumstances.
She left a challenge question with us: What percentages of gasses are in the air we breathe?
Thank you Ms. Goode for spending the day together to help us learn!
Thank you Ms. Goode for spending the day together to help us learn!