Christina Rose, Friday Sept 28th 2007, 2.5/3?

Today in class we:

• Went over/did are you ready questions, Pg 86 questions, Pg 88 #7,8,6 , Pg 93 #3
• Interactions within ecosystems crossword
• Started the new unit; Ecosystems and Population change
  

Thoughts/ questions:

• I think an ecotone is an amazing thing. I always just thought it was an ecosystem, and that it was as simple as that.
  
• What's the general size of an ecotone?
  

Above/ beyond:

• What's the general size of an ecotone?
• Ecotones vary in size and species composition, containing elements of each of the bordering communities.
• http://polyland.calpoly.edu/OVERVIEW/Archives/derome/communities.html

Tane Stange Wednesday, September 26th 3/3

Today in class we: -maked the lab from tusday (water testing)

-we started a new lab

-reviewed for our unit test by playing Jeopardy.

The water testing lab that we did yesterday was not very accurate, mainly becuase we started to run out of time. We tested the creek water first, so we almost ran out of time before had tested the golf corse pond water.

The purpose of the expeiment today was to find the calorie loss or calorimetry in different types of foods. In doing this, we had to measure the water temperature before and after we burned the food stuff. We also had to measure food in order to calculate the results properly, because some of foods were bigger, and the results would not have been accurate.

In my hypothesis I guessed that the peanut would burn longer and give off more heat, but suprisingly the cheezie did. After the lab, we played Jeopardy to review for our unit test.

Personally I found this lab interesting because the results turned out opposite of what I had expected. But on the other hand the results weren't completly accurate, because to food did not burn completly.

When i went to google, i searched for 'food calorimetry', and about 3 of the sites that came up was the experiment that we did...lol.

http://www.woodrow.org/teachers/chemistry/institutes/1988/foodheat.html

Mac Walton Thursday Sept.20 3/3

1.Today we

• Went to class
• went to the library
• worked on our biojar project

2. I think that you couldn't have an ecosystem in a jar because not all of the matter would cycle. and cause there wouldn't be enough biodiversity. My group had a shrink ray because it is the only way we could fit a bear. I wonder what is the worlds smallest organism? I bet it is Kari. oh burn. I found the project interesting because you got to make stuff up.
3. I googled up whats the smallest organism in the world. It sent me here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smallest_organisms.
It said that Nanobes are thought to be the smallest at about 20nm. I also learned about the smallest bird amphibian, mammal and fish. Below is the smallest mammal: The bumble bee bat.

Ashley Saunders 3/3

Today in biology 20 we began the class by handing in Tests that Mr. Challoner gave us the oppotunity to improve our mark. After this we marked our acid rain and Ord kangaroo rat sheet. We went over the answers and then handed our sheets in.

Later on in the class we went over the carbon cycle. Here we learned that cows breath in oxegyn, and breath out carbon dioxide (this goes for any animals and humans). Cows also fart which leads to carbon into the atmosphere. C02 Moves around the cycle constantly. Methan leads to things in this cycle rotting, and the last component in this cycle is burning fossell fuels. A diagram like this helps show how everything is related to each other in some way.

After going over the carbon cycle we had to fill out our own workshett of the carbon cycle. Once this was filled out we had to do a chart that had to do with carbon resevoirs organic and inorganic. If we needed help understanding how to do this we could read pages 49-51. there were two really helpfull paragraphs, one on page 49 "Resevoirs for Inorganice Carbon" and "Resevoirs for Organic Carbon."

My thoughts and opinions on todays topics and discussions was a very helpfull topic. its helps me and my classmates understand cycles like this easier. We have done this in previous grades but a little reveiw on this topic was not a bad idea. The part where we had to do the chart on resivoirs also helpfull because it helped us realise how things fit into certain categories and where the belong in the cycle.

Here I added a photo of the carbon cycle.

September 14 - Dylan Webster - 3/3

Today in class we checked our expirement on measuring water loss from leaves. We went outside and collected our baggies that we tied on trees and found that they had collected some water from the leaves. Then we weighed aour baggies and recordered our information. It was a really short class due to the terry fox run so we just worked on questions about acid deposition for the rest of class.

I was really surprised on how much water was actually collected in the baggies. Some people had 7 grams of water collected in one of their bags. It think it was a really good expiriment because it really shows the major role that trees play in tranpiration.

I did some googling on acid deposition (acid rain) and found out that acid rain is usually characterized as any precipitaion with a pH of 5.6 or lower and can be in any form of rain, snow, mist, dry dust, hail, or sleet. Also 10% of all sulfur dioxide emmision comes from volcanoes, sea spray, plankton, and rotting vegetation.

Mr. Challoner, Sept 10, Mark:3/3

what we did today

• recapped Ch1


• took a quick quiz on Ch1


• touched into Ch2 (trophic levels and terms)


• intro'd BLOG

Thoughts / Questions

Our discussion made me wonder about the biodome project (why didn't it work?), how many organisms can exist in a given food chain (max # of trophic levels?), and just how thick is the biosphere (other than "saran wrap"). It's hard to believe that this small region is the only place that life exists in the universe.

Above / Beyond

According to this site: www.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/biosphere the average thickness of the biosphere is about 5400m above sea level to 9000m below sea level. That's 14.4km - not very thick (like driving to hwy 22!). Note: some organisms have been recorded outside of this range - at least temporarily e.g. Ruppels vulture found at 11,300m! and some fish found at -8372m! Most organisms at the extremes of the biosphere are single-celled bacteria.