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Healing plants walk Paies

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This term the healing plants lecture and the healing plants walk are set to run in the order set by the weather. In good weather the walk will be on Tuesday and the lecture on Thursday. The lecture is now centered around an expanded slide deck that includes both an ethnobotanical introduction to healing plants as well as a flora of common healing plants. That slide deck had previously only been a flora. This moves the lecture on why plants are medicinal and what distinguishes public from private healing knowledge into the lecture and unloads this from the Paies walk.   Shifting the ethnobotanical material to the lecture day hollowed out the field walk day. The walk will now focus on specific healing uses - a necessity as student healing plant knowledge is in free fall along with the local language. A multi-page list of some specific uses of some of the specific plants we will see - in the order we will see them - will be the new core to the field walk lecture.  ...
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Botany laboratory two: Seeds and germination

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A plundering of the botanical cabinets revealed two different stashes of peat pots and soils, two more plastic trays, and various other plastic pots. There are now five different potting mixes on hand plus a sixth bag as yet unopened.  The student's favored the larger pots. The watering can is missing the sprinkling head and is overly large for the task at hand. A smaller pot would work well. A few drops of liquid plant food were added to the water. Beverly waters her peat pot. Jenry-Thor works on his seed pot. Amaryssa found that the potting soil was slow to wet. Mirabella on the right setting up her pot.  Some students did not have seeds to plants. There is solid stash of supplies remaining. 
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Acceleration day one

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Class started in A101 with a quick reminder of the linear graphs of last week. Students were then asked to predict the time versus distance graph for a RipStik run the starts from a speed of zero and then goes faster and faster. The predictions were almost all linear. The one correct forecast was highlighted post hoc. That correct prediction was mitigated by the inclusion on the same paper of two additional linear relationships.  A thirty meters run was preset ahead of class with marks at 0, 1.5, 3, 6, 9,...27, 30 meters. The LRC start remains optimal as no swizzling need be done for the first 1.5 meters. Then a slow swizzle is begun.  Perhaps the 27 meter should have been omitted, but the data worked out well enough.  With measurements already marked off ahead if class, the run was completed in a single trial. Acceleration was increasingly shaky out beyond 18 meters The dismount was cluns...
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3.1 Introduction to graphs

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After reviewing 2.3 2.4 2.5, the favorite foods survey data was used to introduce circle charts, column charts, and Pareto charts. The mode from a frequency table was also covered. Following this was a presentation on population census data and enrollment by state using circle charts. This could benefit from having the students make a circle chart and column chart from the college data on their own. The errant census data should be omitted. The census data, or lack thereof, has become a distraction from the statistics.
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Velocity Friday: Undefined velocities, Bernoulli, and Magnus

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One meter segments were chalk marked into the floor. Then a velocity of zero meters per second was demonstrated.  Zero meters per second was graphed, as was a negative velocity.  Then the issue of the implications of a vertical line on a time versus distance graph were covered.  Once a student said "Nothing" which triggered Billy Preston's 1974 Nothing from nothing leaves nothing.  The funnels were brand new and still in their packaging. So I unpacked them and asked a student to blow a ping pong ball out of the funnel. As hard as she tried, and she tried hard, the ping pong ball would not budge. This led to Bernoulli's theorem of pressure differentials due to velocity. The class wrapped up with the Magnus effect using ping pong balls and curved ball launchers. 
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Seedless vascular plants walk

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The ethnobotany seedless vascular plant walk launched on a cold open with no attendance taken. The Phlegmariurus phlegmaria is well developed. A second plant has developed to the left. The walk began here as these mango trees also display Davillia solida, Davallia heterophylla, Davillia pectinata, Microsorum scolopendria, and Sphaerostephanos maemonensis.  The Pixel Pro 10 proved worthy in a long close up image of the strobili on Phlegmariurus phlegmaria. Davallia heterophylla Davallia heterophylla Cyathea nigricans, recovering from the damage done when the Campnosperma brevipetiolata was cut down and dropped onto the tree fern. Grace smiling, Anastasia with En Neiritancy.  Haploteris elongata. Psilotum complanatum Walking along the Pterocarpus indica trees.  Psilotum nudum A lone remnant Selaginella in Haruki. There is a need to run a rescue...
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