After weeks of working REALLY HARD, gathering piece by piece of evidence to support an answer to our Driving Question (Why do dead things disappear?), while also gathering evidence to support lots of other questions we generated, we've FIGURED IT ALL OUT!

We spent today building a large class model, which shows what we've figured out about:
1. Organisms that consume other organisms (even when they're dead).
2.  Plants that "consume" air and water, along with light energy.
3.  How matter and energy don't disappear, but rather move around in an ecosystem.
4.  The difference between matter (as particles) and energy (as non-particles)
5.  How organisms grow bigger (when they consume matter and energy).

We also filled out our Model Tracker one last time along with answering any remaining questions on our DQB we felt we could answer.

After comparing models to show how plants grow because of the matter and energy they consume, we came to consensus as a class on the following:

1.  Plants take in air and water for the matter they need to grow.  This means the amount of air and water around them gets smaller as the plants get bigger.  The only way the plant can get bigger in weight is from things that have weight themselves, like air and water, which are made of particles!

2.  Plants also take in energy.  They can't grow without it.  This means that plants have energy inside them, and we know this because when we consume plants, we get energy to move and maintain our body's temperature.  

3. All the energy in plants comes from the sun!

We are wondering the following things:
1.  What do plant particles really look like, knowing a plant particle is different than a water and air particle? 
2. Do the air and water mix and change because of the light energy?  (We're thinking this because it's kind of like baking a cake--the flour and eggs used to make a cake look different than a cake itself, and it needs heat energy from the oven to change it into a cake).

We've done a lot of heavy lifting in fifth grade in our Roadkill Unit.  We've been able to ABSOLUTELY figure out why dead things disappear while simultaneously figuring out why things appear (or grow bigger), too!  We'll be building a final model to put all the pieces together from everything we've figured out!

Plants need air, water, and sunlight to grow: Check!
Air and water give plants the matter they need to grow because they have weight: Check!
Light gives a plant energy to grow, but it doesn't have weight: Check!

Now model this...go!

Well, not that fast! How do we actually get these important science findings across and out in the open now that we've figured out these important pieces to our puzzle?  Check out the various groups' models about how plants get the matter and energy they need to grow!

The class agreed that light doesn't have weight.  But what exactly does light give plants?

​We used a couple of "gadgets" Mrs. Brinza had lying around to help us figure out what light does for plants!

After some investigating, we continued to agree that light doesn't add weight to anything, but what it does do is this:

1.  Get things moving!
2.  Heat them up!
3.  Power them on!

All these things got us thinking that these things are ENERGY!  Light gives plants energy...we're really on to something here!

Our investigations last Friday left us feeling pretty good about gathering evidence if air, water, and light had weight.  We still didn't have total agreement on air having weight, so we did our air investigations again as a class (this time with a balloon-pump and a basketball pump to alleviate any spit).  We gathered evidence in a fair test that both the air in the balloon and the air in the basketball had weight, so we agreed that air definitely has weight, although not much.  We revisited our light experiments, too.  And to no avail, no matter how much or which type of light (natural or artificial) we put on the scale, the scale always registered 0.0g.

This got us thinking about what light could look like at a zoom-in level, since we proved it has weight.  Some students shared their thinking and created models like this:

From everything we got from our researcher's data, we realize that if a plant is growing bigger, it must be gaining weight.  If this is the case, then this must mean that everything it needs has weight, right?

So we did a bunch of investigations to figure out if air, water, and light have weight.  

And between trying to weigh air, water, and light, we figured out that air and water have weight, but light doesn't.  Despite using multiple flashlights, heat-lamp light, and natural light from outside, we never got the scale to measure any weight.

​We weren't convinced about the balloon, so we're going to use a pump and a ball on Monday knowing people spit may be giving the blown up balloons weight!  Check back in!

Since we don't have an agreement on how plants get the matter they need to grow, we've decided to do some investigations to figure this out.  We decided to run our own investigations, but we'll also be using a researcher's data, too, since plants take a slow time to grow.  Here's a glimpse of the start of our work:

So after figuring out that the vast majority of the food we consume can be traced back to plants (we're thinking fungus isn't plants, by the way), we decided to try and figure out where plants get their matter from.  We had a really intense (and kind of confusing in my opinion) discussion, which led us thinking that we all should get our ideas out on the table. We developed some initial models around this idea of how plants get their matter to grow.

Our thoughts are varied, but we are thinking the following:

Plants might get their matter from a combination of these things:
1.  Soil
2. Sunlight
3.  Water
4. Air

From this, we started asking questions about these things to prompt future investigations to gather evidence.  And here were questions that really dig deep into figuring out more about where plants get the matter they need to grow:

• What is air?
• What is it made of?
• Do plants need light?
• Does air have weight?
• Does sunlight weigh anything?
• If the plant is getting bigger, why doesn't the soil get smaller?
• What exactly do plants eat?
• How does a plant get matter from the sunlight if sunlight doesn't have any weight?

We've got some investigation ideas out there, too, which include some fair tests with some plants and weighing some stuff.  Maybe the plants themselves? Maybe the stuff that we think gives them matter?  Maybe we should do stuff to figure out more about air because it doesn't really seem to weigh anything?

Check back...because there's a lot of learning going on!!!

After we agreed that the raccoon on the side of the road was once a baby raccoon, we investigated how it got bigger.  We've been asking a lot of questions about us getting bigger, and it was time to dig deeper into this related phenomenon.  So with some talking and investigation what we eat to get bigger, we built some models.

No matter what students said they ate, it seemed like it could always be traced back to plants.  But the crazy thing is, plants don't eat like us (at least we think).  They've appeared in some of our dead stuff columns, but we're not really sure how they get the matter they need to grow.  

This is making us think that we should investigate how plants get the matter they need to grow, since plants are living things like animals...

Now that we've figured out some stuff about our dead stuff columns (like what the worms are doing and that fuzzy/velvety stuff), we've headed back to the raccoon that launched all these investigations in the first place.  We have recognized that when we consider what happens to dead stuff disappearing, it's really be transferred into the organism that consumes it, and it's getting smaller.  This all takes place as the organism that's doing the consuming gets bigger.  Which made us think...how did that raccoon on the side of the road get bigger from a baby to an adult?

Reading an article about raccoons helped us figure out that a raccoon's diet is pretty varied, and it eats a wide range of things.  All these organisms seem to "disappear" as the raccoon gets bigger, and we created a consensus model showing how the raccoon gets the matter it needs to grow (longer bones, more fur, replacement skin, etc. to name a few)!

We've also been checking in on our dead stuff columns, and we've been finding some pretty awesome things that are making us ask some new questions.  Here are some of our new findings: