Wednesday 6 March 2013
Why I(Chris) have not blogged
I have been away for most of the lessons but I was present in the creation of our Eco-column. I have been away twice on rowing tour. I have missed numerous lessons and this is why Luke and Matt have been doing most of the blogging.
Observation of Changes in the biotic components
Today - 12 March. It seems that our plants are shrinking and some of the leaves are going. We reaserched this and found it can be caused by a few things. Over fertilising, high heat, high light, over watering and under watering. We believe the cause of our leaves vurling and darkening to a blackish/brownish ishigh heat and too much moisture in the terra zone as there was initially a lot of water when we started the eco system.
The tips of the plants are also rough and look like they have been eaten off by the large insect.
There are no fruit flies left in the decomp zone. We believe that they have escaped through the air holes in the side of the plastic bottle. We made the holes for air transfer in and out of the decomp zone. We never expected any fruit flies to fly into this zone.
The fruit flies have all disappeared out of our decomp zone.
The praying mantis and other large unidentified insect are still alive.
The plants are all looking green although the one plant had a few darker blackish leaves.
Fruit flies have flown into or have developed in our decomp zone.
The pray-mantis is still alive in our Eco-column.
The plants are all green.
25 February - 3:30pm
Today we found some white fungi in the decomp zone! This will be very interesting to look at under a microscope!
Abiotic components data collection
7 March - 9am
The air temperature was 23 degrees celcius.
The water temperature was 22 degrees celcius.
The water is alkaline.
Condensation was taking place on the perforated lid in the terra zone and shows the ecosystem is self sustaining as plants photsynthesize and release oxygen and water vapour.
(7 March done by Chris Mewett as blogger on his laptop is not working)
5 March - 3:30 pm
The air temperature in the classroom was 26 degrees celsius.
The water was alkaline.
Condensation was taking place on the perforated lid in the terra zone and shows the ecosystem is self sustaining as plants photsynthesize and release oxygen and water vapour.
The water temperature in the aqua zone was 27 degrees celsius. We believe this to be caused by the increase in air temperature.
1 March - 9:30am
The temperature in the biology classroom B3 was 22 degrees Celsius.
Condensation was taking place on the perforated lid in the terra zone and shows the ecosystem is self sustaining as plants photsynthesize and release oxygen and water vapour.
The water is 1 degrees Celsius lower then yesterday at 21 degrees Celsius.
The water level has stayed more or less the same.
The water was alkaline.
28 February - 10:45am
The air temperature in biology classroom B3 was 22 degrees Celsius.
The water temperature in the ecosystem is 22 degrees Celsius and the water level has stayed more or less at a constant level.
Condensation was taking place on the perforated lid in the terra zone and shows the ecosystem is self sustaining as plants photsynthesize and release oxygen and water vapour.
The water was alkaline.
Summary:
The air temperature is changing throughout the day as the day progresses. This has a direct affect on the water temperature. The condensation shows that plants are photosynthesizing, showing sustainability.This means that we do not have to water the ecosystem. Each time we have tested the water it is alkaline. Here is some information about alkalinity of water. The alkalinity of water is a measure of how much acid it can neutralize. Total alkalinity us effected by environmental factors; rain , acid, sanitizers, addition of fill water and other product applications can all change alkalinity over time.
http://www.freedrinkingwater.com/water_quality/quality1/28-08-alkalinity.htm.
Tuesday 5 March 2013
Oberservation of BIOTIC components under light and dissecting microscopes.
We did a Google Image search using the image to look for any other similair images. This returned no results, so the image remains unidentified.
This is a cell scope of the soil from the light microscope. Some white fungi is present. We did a google image search, but it returned no similair images so we could not identify the type of fungi.
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