The experiment continues

 9:54 a.m.

This morning, Room 5 was excited to see what the balloon...the yellow balloon...was like.  When they left yesterday afternoon, it was starting to inflate.  You can see it in the window.  It was much larger when I left school last night, but by this morning, it was starting to deflate. 

 9:55 a.m.

At 9 a.m., we set the experiment up again, for the second time, doing it exactly the same.  We put an orange balloon on this one.  We did an observation about every 30 - 45 minutes for the morning...then again after lunch.  We continued monitoring the yellow balloon, too.

9:55 a.m.

Room 5ers would come by, observe the bottles, the liquid, and the balloons...

10:45 a.m.

Then go back to their desks and write the observations down...

10:46 a.m.

We had quite the interest from students walking past our classroom...all looking at the bottles with the balloons in the window...

10:48 a.m.

1:45 p.m.

The yellow balloon, at one time, was the size of the orange one...

so why?  Why is the balloon inflating in the first place...and why is it deflating?

1:45 p.m.

Remember:  our purpose is 'What determines if an organism is alive?"

To set up the experiment, we had 2 cups of warm water and stirred in 2 Tablespoons of honey until it dissolved.  We then added one package (2 1/4 t.) of Quick-Rise Yeast.  That was stirred, then we poured it into the bottle using a funnel.  The last part was putting the balloon on top.  

Room 5 had a discussion before we started.  They knew the Purpose of the experiment... then they had to write their hypothesis.  (Their best educated guess.)  People were agreeing, at first, that to be 'alive', there needed to blood pulsing through the veins.  Some said you had to be able to open and close your eyes.  You had to have a heartbeat.  Eventually, someone said an organism had to have respiration "like a tree."  

"A tree?" I asked.  "Is a tree alive?"

There was a unanimous yes...

"Does a tree have blood pulsing through it's veins?"

No

"Does a tree have a heartbeat"

No

"So should we change the criteria for determining if an organism is alive?"

Yes

I reminded them of the ingredients we were using for our experiment... and asked them if yeast was alive.  They were stumped...

David said it was a fungus.  He explained that it was in the same family as mushrooms.

"Is it, Mrs. Johnston?"

Yes

We will be exploring the Purpose over the next couple of days...

and we'll continue to do some observations...

and hopefully reach a conclusion.

In between some of our observations, we looked at yeast under a microscope.  It's rectangular, which seemed to surprise many in Room 5...

We'll see what happens!