This week, we continued our discussion about how animals survive the winter with a look into hibernation. After watching a video about the wood frog and how it creates its own antifreeze, glycerol, to allow it to completely shut down for the winter, we saw first hand how sugar water reacts differently to cold temperatures than pure water. The students brought home a lab set up where they can observe these changes over the course of several hours. We also jumped back to our classification unit and worked with a snowflake cladogram. I think they all agreed that classifying things can be tricky and there is a lot of room for interpretation--same issues that come up with scientists all the time! This activity had a second part which was sent home with the students where they can create their own snowflake dichotomous key and test it out on their family and friends. If any of them try it out, make sure they let me know how it went! Our final activity for our short winter unit was another look into how animals are equipped to survive the colder, winter temperatures. We did a group demonstration to see how the water temperature affects the rate of respiration (which indicates change in metabolism) of a goldfish. Our group saw a significant difference just by lowering the water temperature by a few degrees. We talked about why this would be advantageous to fish who live in harsh winter climates (decreased need for food which is hard to find in the winter). The students were worried that our fish, Pierogi, would be harmed, but we were careful and he came out as active as ever. Books Extreme Animals Videos Frogscicles: Frozen But Still Alive --This is the frog video we watched in class. Fish Respiration Lab --This will explain in more detail what we demonstrated in class. We did not do this as a full lab, but just a short demonstration.
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May 2020
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