Science
Science is used in countless ways. Learning about the world around us can give us new solutions to everyday problems. In this class, we will use different aspects of science, such as the water and carbon cycles, microbial ecology, soil chemistry, and even tree rings to solve a murder mystery. While a murder mystery is not an everyday problem, everything taught in this course can be relayed to everyday life and give us a new way of looking at science!
I am most excited about sharing some lesser known sciences and spreading a love for science with middle school students!
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The first picture is me doing some soil science and the second is some tree ring research." - Luly
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Week 1: The first lesson will focus on the water and carbon cycles. We will take an in-depth examination of the inputs and outputs of each cycle, how the cycle flows, and what outside factors affect this. To wrap up, we will examine how the water and carbon cycles affect ecosystems and the larger scale implications of each cycle.
Week 2: Our second lesson will remain in the realm of environmental science as we learn about soil science and dendrology (the study of trees). Both soils and trees contain stored information and we will learn how to unpack that information. Some of the concepts we will be focusing on are soil chemistry, water storage, and dendrochronology (using tree rings to discover more about the growing conditions of the past).
Week 3: For our third lesson, we will branch into microbial ecology and how organisms decompose. Every aspect of our previous lessons plays a role in decomposition and learning what decomposition means and what can affect. This will be our last step in finding out what we need to know for the final project.
Week 4: In our final lesson, we will combine all of the knowledge we have acquired over the last three weeks and bring it together to solve a murder mystery. Using aspects from each different branch of science, we will complete a case study regarding a murder mystery. It will be our job to determine how long the body has been buried underground to solve the mystery.
Course Instructors
