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Cells and Systems 6-8 / Week 12 / Nature Day
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Week 12 · Design a Growing Station

Nature Day

Nature Day: Present the station and the report
// Criteria, constraints and the Cells and Systems report
⏱ about 20 min

Nature Day: Present the Station and the Report

Saturday morning the whole crew gathers at the Windowsill. Rocket holds the ruler. Raven holds the Log. Nova hovers above the box.

"Final reading," Rocket says. "Station tallest: eight point two. Control tallest: eight point one. Station stems upright. Control leaning."

"What do you notice about the gap?" Raven asks. "Height is close. Upright is clear."

"So the foil helped the stems a lot and the height a little," Rocket says. "And the roof flap? Too soon to tell."

Nova brightens. "You defined a problem, built, tested, judged and improved," she says. "That is engineering."

"And twelve weeks of science behind it," Raven says, opening the report. "Time to share it."

  1. A design problem has criteria, what the solution must do, and constraints, the limits it must respect, including the science.
  2. The station was tested against a control jar with the same measurements every day.
  3. A design can win one criterion and lose another. Keep what worked, change one thing, test again.
  4. Growth depends on environmental factors, such as light and water, and on genetic factors, the kind of seed.
  5. The Cells and Systems report explains life from one cell to a garden, with evidence from your own Windowsill Log.
◇ FAMILY PRESENTATION
Set the station and the control jar side by side. Take the final measurements together, out loud.
The student presents the design problem, the data table and the redesign. Family members ask one question each.
Then the student reads two sections of the Cells and Systems report. Family members name one thing they learned.
Together, decide one more change you would make to the station if the test ran another week.
For a grown-up
The report is the course's final piece of work. It is written in the student's own words, with evidence from their log.
Praise the process: defining, testing, judging and improving, whichever jar won. Many stations tie on height, and that is a real result.
Course facts came from the National Library of Medicine, the National Human Genome Research Institute, free OpenStax biology textbooks and nextgenscience.org.
Safety first
Reflectors are angled down toward the sprouts, never toward anyone's eyes.
Sprouts, seeds and jar water are lab materials, never tasted. Wash hands after handling the jars.
THINK IT THROUGH
  • Read the question.
  • Tap your answer.
The station and control end nearly tied on height, but the station's stems are upright. Did the design meet any criterion?
A family member asks why the control jar mattered. Which is the best answer?
Nature Day checkTrue or false?
A fair test compares a design with a control that was left unchanged.?
The report should use evidence from the student's own Windowsill Log.?
A design that ties on one criterion has failed completely.?
WHY THIS EXERCISEEngineering judges a design by all its criteria and improves it from the evidence.
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