Jan 7th, 2020: Day 2 part 1

hi its Sarah again 😉

So Day 2 starts with Sheila droppin knowledge about plants and how hydroponic systems work. One unfortunate event: Sheila was attacked by the hydrogen peroxide–H2O2 (35%) and ended up have a rash on her leg. Crazy thing was… she was a trooper and taught her whole module with no sign of pain on her face (like watttt?!!). Anyways, one thing to learn from this is that strong concentrations of H2O2 will irritate your skin so please careful when handling!!! Anyways, we learned that plants do not necessarily need soil and sunlight to grow (WAT!!). Plants just need a growth medium to replace the soil such as fertilizer/water and plants need light. Plants specifically absorb red and blue light so we can replace sunlight with red and blue LED lights and it will grow just fine (wow dats crazy). After learning about plants and what they need to grow, the students got into groups of three/four and built their own hydroponic system!!! The hydroponic system they built used rockwool [rock heated at high temperatures to shape into wool then it is wrapped], fertilizer, water, and of course seeds. The setup: the box is filled with fertilizer and water, then the rockwool is place onto styrofoam so it can float on top of the water, finally the seeds are placed into the hole in the rockwool— bamm we let them grow :). The students grew lettuce, basil and tomatoes and hopefully they will see results in the next two weeks 🙂 Some students were super into the project and was excited to make their own hydroponic systems while others were zoned out on their phones. There are always pros and cons to teaching and it is always hard to cater to all the students interests. But it is important to always keep a positive attitude!