Abby Schwartz is a scientist part of the scientist in residence program. She came to our classroom to teach us about a salmons sense of smell (Salmon experiment) and about woodbug condition preferences.
Wood bugs are popular insects that almost everyone in vancouver is familiar with. Abby helped us to see wich kind of conditions a woodbug likes best. What we did was we thought of three conditions to test on the animals. Dark/light, damp/dry, and warm or cool were the conditions we tested. Each table group got one experiment. Two (groups) for light/dark, two for damp/dry, and two for warm/cool. It was our responsibility to make sure that the two groups who were doing the same experiment did it EXACTLY the same!
Each group got a container. We fitted out containers to fit the environment that we were going to test (damp or dry had one wet paper towel on one side and a dry one on the other, light or dark covered one side of there container and left the other side open).
After we fitted our environment, we brought our woodbugs (16 each experiment) and did the control. We tested to see how many went on each side with out any water on a napkin or hot water bottles under one side. We did this to make sure the wood bugs were attracted to one of the conditions and not to one specific side of the container.
When we finnally finished our control, we did our experiment! We gently placed the woodbugs into the container in the middle, and waited to minutes to count how many were on each side. We recorded it onto our science lab books and then onto a larger sheet of paper that was put up onto the wall. This way we can write up our conclusion to the experiments later.
We needed to do the experiment a second time! Our buddies came to our classroom with there own questions and notes to take on there own clip board. We walked around with our little buddies to each experiment and helped them to take there notes.
Finnally we clean up, and release the woodbugs!
Working with Abby was really fun because we got to work with salmon and wood bugs. I thought it would be impossible to be able to work with live fish and insects for experiments, but because Abby helped me to know what to do and how to do it safely I was successful. (Kevin)
Working with my hands on the salmon and wood bugs made a big difference for me. I didn't have to read about it in a book, I had to know that I was doing the right thing to help keep the salmon and the bugs safe and healthy while I ran the experiment. Also Abby was a good source of knowledge, I had many questions about fish and sharks that she was always willing to answer. When she answered she didn't talk down to me, she treated me as if I had knowledge myself. (Siobhan)