ECOSYSTEMS
Ecosystems consist of consumers, producers, and decomposers.
primary consumer (caterpillar), secondary consumer (bird), tertiary consumer (cat), decomposer (mushroom), producer (plants)
Living things are distinguished from nonliving things by their interactions with the environment. They take in materials form the environment and give off materials to the environment. This is how they get energy for growth and development.
Living vs. Non-living: use stuffed animals and fake plants to have students compare/ contrast with real animals and plants.
Germination: process of seeds sprouting and beginning to grow
Taxonomy: entire classification system
Seeds contain baby plant (embryo) and the food the embryo needs to begin germinating. Food is contained in the cotyledon. Seeds to not need sunlight until it grows leaves because they live off of stored food in the cotyledon. After growing leaves, the plant needs sunlight to produce food.
Dissolved minerals in the soil make their way to the plant through the water intake of its root system.
Photosynthesis: process by which plants use carbon dioxide from air and water from soil (in presence of sunlight) to produce glucose.
Class definition: Plant uses energy from the sun to break apart and recombine water and carbon dioxide from the air to make sugar (and
oxygen as a byproduct). Sugar is a big molecule with energy stored in its bonds.
Photo=light, synthesis=put together
Illuminating Photosynthesis http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/nature/photosynthesis.html
Glucose: sugar that is used for growth and other functions
Vegetable: a root, stem, leaf, or flower of a plant
Fruit: container for the plant's seeds
primary consumer (caterpillar), secondary consumer (bird), tertiary consumer (cat), decomposer (mushroom), producer (plants)
Living things are distinguished from nonliving things by their interactions with the environment. They take in materials form the environment and give off materials to the environment. This is how they get energy for growth and development.
Living vs. Non-living: use stuffed animals and fake plants to have students compare/ contrast with real animals and plants.
Germination: process of seeds sprouting and beginning to grow
Taxonomy: entire classification system
Seeds contain baby plant (embryo) and the food the embryo needs to begin germinating. Food is contained in the cotyledon. Seeds to not need sunlight until it grows leaves because they live off of stored food in the cotyledon. After growing leaves, the plant needs sunlight to produce food.
Dissolved minerals in the soil make their way to the plant through the water intake of its root system.
Photosynthesis: process by which plants use carbon dioxide from air and water from soil (in presence of sunlight) to produce glucose.
Class definition: Plant uses energy from the sun to break apart and recombine water and carbon dioxide from the air to make sugar (and
oxygen as a byproduct). Sugar is a big molecule with energy stored in its bonds.
Photo=light, synthesis=put together
Illuminating Photosynthesis http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/nature/photosynthesis.html
Glucose: sugar that is used for growth and other functions
Vegetable: a root, stem, leaf, or flower of a plant
Fruit: container for the plant's seeds
![Picture](/uploads/2/3/0/3/23036350/3837963.jpg?207)
Silk Worms!
Link to website: http://www.insectlore.com
Link to website: http://www.insectlore.com
- Put eggs on Mulberry leaf and look at it under a microscope.
- Draw what you see.
- Have students check on these silk worms on a daily basis and have them record any changes they see in their science notebooks.
![Picture](/uploads/2/3/0/3/23036350/1380748440.jpg)
Leaves During the Fall
- When leaves change colors, the only green you see is in the middle, branching out to the "veins"
- The same goes with the tree. The ends of the branches are where the colored leaves are.
- To find out if it's the sun causing this change in color, tie brown paper bags around many different branches that still possess green leaves, so the sun cannot get to them.
- We also took a plucked a handful of green leaves to keep in our classroom.
- One month later the leaves with bags on them were yellow. Other leaves were red and the green was growing off the ends of the leaves. The leaves we had in our classroom remained green.
- During the summer, the leaves are the food production factories for the plant: the chlorophyll, which gives the plant its green color, is the compound that traps light energy for the plant. Through the process of photosynthesis, the plant uses this energy to change carbon dioxide gas into food and building materials (sugars, starches and cellulose). In the fall, a deciduous tree shuts down this food production factory, and the chlorophyll is broken down and reabsorbed. (Chlorophyll is not very stable and is broken down easily.) If you look at the leaves that were picked and put in the dark, you will notice that they are a dull green: with the leaves severed from the tree, the chlorophyll in them could not be reabsorbed.
- Some species of trees, such as Maples, will form a red pigment in the fall if the days are warm and sunny and the nights cold. These trees produce sugar in the leaves during the day, but this sugar doesn't move out when the nights are cold and the leaf's connections to the tree begin to break down. The high sugar concentration and light favor the formation of a class of pigments called anthocyanins, which are red. So, the leaves left out in the sunlight turned red by this process. Recent research shows that this red pigment protects the leaf as a kind of sunscreen so that it can more effectively harvest all the nutrients in the leaf.
- It turns out that tree leaves have yellow and orange pigments (called carotenoids) in them all summer long, but this yellow is masked by the green during the summer. Carotenoids are much more stable than chlorophyll. The leaves I kept inside the paper bag on the tree had lower concentrations of sugar (since they were in the dark) and no light, so therefore the red anthocyanins were not evident. As the chlorophyll broke down, the yellow color was revealed.
- The actual color change observed is different for different species of trees: poplars tend to be yellow, oaks go to red and brown (brown is the color of the dead leaf itself without any extra pigment), maples can be orange or red, etc. Colors can also be different within a species (or even on one tree), depending on factors such as stress, exposure, moisture, and so on.
![Picture](/uploads/2/3/0/3/23036350/8169498.jpg?228)
Lima Bean Dissection
- Soak beans for one hour.
- Have students label parts of the bean.
- Microphyle: allows water absorption
- Hilum: the location where the bean was attached to the plant's stalk during development
- Seed Coat: outer, protective skin
- Embryo: developing plant still inside the seed
- Cotyledon: contains stored food used for initial growth
![Picture](/uploads/2/3/0/3/23036350/7246142.jpg)
- Stuck in bag with wet paper towel for 5 days
- Roots and stem included
- Bean has a lot of green on it. Why does the soaked bean not have any green? Where did the energy come from that allows growth?