To the Moon and Beyond

Jason Avent

5^th Six weeks lesson plan

Monday 1

Tuesday 2

Wednesday 3

Thursday 4

Friday 5

Friday Extension

Calendar Week 1

Parts of the cell and what they do.  Generalize these parts and make analogies to buildings, cars, etc.  have students connect a mechanical function to a cellular function.  Scaling up to multicellular organisms, the same functions are again recapitulated at a larger scale.

Viruses and bacteria-

Show difference in scale, complexity, and autonomy.  Viral diseases are listed and bacterial diseases listed.  Common ways to distinguish the two types of infection (response to antibiotics, culturing of sample, PCR test for specific bacterial and viral DNA.) 

Bacteria in your body.  Blood and tissues are ideally sterile, but the digestive system wouldn’t work without bacteria.  The key to disease prevention is to avoid picking up bacteria from others and avoid spreading yours to them.  Contrast pathogens and mutualistic bacteria.  New approaches to treatment target pathogenicity genes rather than targeting bacteria in general.  Why is it a problem to give antibiotics for a viral infection

Discussion of microbes- which ones would we need to take to The Moon?  Would it be possible to prevent or screen out disease organisms when transporting people to The Moon?  What are the possible drawbacks?  Would you expect disease to re-evolve in a lunar colony if diseases were eliminated during the transport?

Test on bacteria, viruses and other microbes

The microbes we have studied are often highlighted as “bad” because diseases are so interesting.  What happens to you if all of the bacteria in your colon are killed?  What kinds of opportunities does this provide pathogenic microbes?

Monday 6

Tuesday 7

Wednesday 8

Thursday 9

Friday 10

Friday extension

Calendar Week 2

Start “Producers Make their own food”

http://astroventure.arc.nasa.gov/teachers/pdf/AV-Biolesson-3.pdf

Producers Make their own food” discussion and lecture- how do organisms make their own food and different kinds (archaebacteria, cyanobacteria, algae, and plants)

Lesson on symbiotes that are producers-

coral+algae, Tube worms+archaebacteria, Legumes+ rhizobium, plants+ Chloroplasts (endosymbiosis)

Some things live in together organisms and “pay rent” for space, protection, mobility, stable environment, nutrient collection,  etc.

One experimental group in the plant growing groups gets a baking soda+vinegar fizz in growth chamber- ask how they think this will affect the plant.  CO₂- a pollutant and/or a nutrient? (both, but in different circumstances)

Photorespiration and the need for CO₂ by plants.

C4  and CAM metabolism discussion- collecting CO₂ and pumping it into an O₂ free cellular compartment- why are the chloroplasts in the bundle sheath fat and white and the ones outside skinny and green?  Why do CAM plants breathe at night?

Would CO₂ have its pollutant properties on The Moon in enclosed habitats?  Show chart of how much CO₂ increase a human cannot detect.  How much would a plant like to have?  What seems like a good compromise?

Monday 11

Tuesday 12

Wednesday 13

Thursday 14

Friday 15

Friday extension

Calendar Week 3

Lesson 4: Consumers Get Energy From Other Living Things

http://astroventure.arc.nasa.gov/teachers/pdf/AV-Biolesson-4.pdf

Lesson 5:

Decomposers Get Energy

From Dead Things http://astroventure.arc.nasa.gov/teachers/pdf/AV-Biolesson-5.pdf

Discussion of nutrient phase changes Why are the plants in the baking soda chamber growing faster than the others? How can CO2 (gas) become a solid? (show dry ice, oil, and sugar) Where does the water stop being water in the water cycle?  Demo with H₂ fuel cell car.

 6-“The cycle of matter”

http://astroventure.arc.nasa.gov/teachers/pdf/AV-Biolesson-6.pdf

Supplying the Lunar Base discussion- what do you import and what do you grow?  Fresh meat or fresh vegetables?  At what point could livestock be imported to The Moon? Answer: when this animal’s ration can be grown- its ration of plant will be like the ration for one human but provides only 1/10^th of that.  When can you bring your cat?

½ class period quiz

Dealing with dead plants and dead people on The Moon.  If their nutrients are too valuable would they have to be cremated rather than buried?  Making a compost pile- using waste materials like roots, stems, and rot as soil when combined with moon rocks.

Show Periodic chart with needed nutrients bold.

The compost would be a reservoir of carbon and would require more CO₂ to be imported or found vs. hydroponics and a catalytic oven.  Would we want to lock carbon up as compost on Earth?  Why is this different in Space?

Monday 16

Tuesday 17

Wednesday 18

Thursday 19

Friday 20

Friday extension

Calendar Week 4

Evaluate the results from plant growth experiments- Have students discuss their findings after two weeks of plant growth.  What do plants need and why do we need them?  Look at slides of C4 plant tissue and recall the bundle sheath discussed earlier during CO₂ discussion.

Identifying the larger structures of plants and examination of the plant with a hand lens.  Fibrous compared to taproot systems; woody versus herbaceous.  Discussion of functions with students volunteering the functions they think each part has.

i.e. What do you think the hairs (trichomes) on the plant do?

Lab/microscope day looking at prepared slides and learning the tissues of the plant. Along with their functions.

Discuss the functions of the tissues they saw in the microscope and show slides from Dr. Mauseth’s plant anatomy website

http://www.sbs.utexas.edu/mauseth/ResearchOnCacti/index.htm

Lab Practical

Compare a system in a plant to your own systems and contrast.  Circulatory compared to xylem and phloem; stomata and aerenchyma compared to lungs and pores.  Roots compared to our digestive system etc.

Monday 21

Tuesday 22

Wednesday 23

Thursday 24

Friday 25

Friday extension

Claendar Week 5

Nat’l Geo Video: Sexual Encounters of the Floral Kind

Allergies and what plants cause them?  Insect pollination- will we need bees on the moon?  Wind pollination- will we sneeze?  Sterile clones- will the populations collapse suddenly because there is no evolvability?

Dissecting scopes and hand lenses- sexuality of plants.  Some plants like cucumbers “change sex” bearing cheap male flowers when the plant is little and massive fruits when older.  Avoidance of self-fertilization by timing of blooms and self-incompatibility.  Monocot versus dicot flowers distinguishing characteristics also cones from conifers.

Plant oxygen production and light use lab (bring H₂ fuel cell car out again show O₂ and H₂)

Elodea or hornwort + houseplant leaf in a pipette lab.  Compare oxygen produced by plants in a green light, plants in a red light, and a plant in bright sunlight.  Measure temerature at the end.  Why is the houseplant leaf not making O₂?-Adaptations of elodea allow it to use the underwater environment.

How many plants are needed for how many people and how much light will they need?

Read “Farming for the Future” http://www.nasa.gov/vision/earth/livingthings/biofarming.html

Look at chart that relates light, space and food for people.  How small an area can grow the food you need if you put the maximum light on the plants?  Map this space out on the ground and on a set of shelves.

Laboratory review and testing on the plant concepts and anatomy.

Look at the different systems for getting light to plants (direct sun, incandescent, fluorescent, sodium, LED, and fiber optic piping.)  Which kind of system would you employ in space and on the moon.  Remember the south pole crater is always in shadow, but somewhere on the rim there is always sunlight.  How much more light is available per square meter of collection compared to Earth?  How many people could one m² of direct moonlight feed?

Calendar Week 6

Design the system you would want to support you on the Moon.  Break up into groups and start sketching out the best systems.  What will you mine or harvest from the environment?  What will you have to import?  Put systems together in a way that is complementary and efficient.  Brainstorm and internet search- meet with the group outside of class between Mon and Wed.

Students discuss their lines of thinking.  Groups decide what specific aspect of the environment will need to be controlled (temp, humidity, O₂, CO₂, water, light)

Groups are encouraged to take different tacks so that their pieces can fit together.  Groups discuss what parts of the system they want to collaborate on or may be competetive with one another in a head to head fight for the contract.  Group that “wins” gets to go to the Moon and help build it.

Students prepare concept maps and posters (electronically or analog) for their projects.

Students present, critique, and combine projects in class and conjoin posters if necessary.  Competing groups may decide to combine designs and work cooperatively to land the contract (teacher should point out links between competing projects and how they complement).

Big poster session- student groups present their posters in auditorium and get to see the posters done for math, Physics, and biology.  Arrangement of posters and presentations to emphasize the flow of ideas.

Grade given for projects.

How could the different posters here be combined to make a good plan for getting to The Moon or beyond.  Any last minute thoughts that would improve your poster/project?  Permission to “steal” or rather cite (with credit given) from another group’s designs are given in this assignment.  Encourage collaborations between groups.