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Mr. Short from North Charleston SC is requesting lab equipment through DonorsChoose, the most trusted classroom funding site for teachers.

See what Mr. Short is requesting
Student-led project

Exploring The Environment Using Algae: A STEM Experience

We need an" Inquiries in Science: Exploring the Nitrogen Cycle" kit which contains nine aquarium set ups and pumps that we will turn into bioreactors.

  • $357 goal

Hooray! This project is fully funded

Hooray! This project is fully funded

About My Students

My students are freshmen and sophomores in an introductory biology course. They are eager to learn the content while engaging in a student-led STEM project. While they are artistically gifted, many have not had hands on engineering experiences in their science curricula.

These students attend an arts, county-wide magnet school. I hope to reinforce the importance of science in their high school experience. These students are a mix of gender, race, and socio-economic level, representing students from across our school district.

My students are interested in designing an open-ended inquiry experiment as an end of the year culminating project. They have performed experiments in science over the course of their education, but are eager to design, construct, and monitor their own long-term experiment looking at environmental impacts on algae. Being in a coastal region, this project can have direct relevance to our own community and watershed.

The supplies included in this kit will be used immediately in my classroom. We will build and monitor bioreactors out of the aquarium tanks, tubing, and pumps included in the kit. We will grow algae (ordered separately) in these bioreactors. We will let the bioreactors run for several weeks in order to monitor the changes. We will use the testing strips included in the kit to measure for changes in nitrogen, pH, and phosphorus.

Working in groups of two or three, students will use their bioreactors to set up experiments that examine the effects of light, pH, nutrients, temperature, and salinity on the growth and quantity of algae. This project will incorporate engineering skills with science inquiry to promote a 21st Century project based learning experience.

In Their Own Words

We want to build tanks to see how algae and living things grow in response to abiotic factors. We will look at the algae growth over the course of two weeks to see how they live (or die) with different treatments. This experiment will be built and designed by us.

Our student teams will be in charge of designing the aquarium tanks, making sure that the algae are given what they need to live, and monitoring them every day. This will require us to keep good records of the algae and its growth as well as checking the equipment. We will also present our findings at the end of the project to others in the class.

Water quality is an important issue in our town, state, and country. Understanding how factors like light, temperature, and nutrients affect algae can be important in understanding why algal blooms occur in our waters. This project can give us a better understanding of water quality on a biological and ecological level.

Mr. Short
Grades 9-12

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Where Your Donation Goes

Where your donation goes
Materials Cost Quantity Total
Inquiries in Science: Exploring the Nitrogen Cycle Kit • Carolina Biological Supply Company $230.62 1 $230.62

Materials cost

$230.62

Vendor shipping charges

 $23.06

Sales tax

 $16.26

3rd party payment processing fee

$3.46

Fulfillment labor & materials

$30.00

Total project cost

$303.40

Suggested donation to help DonorsChoose reach more classrooms

$53.54

Total project goal

$356.94

How we calculate what's needed

Total project goal

 $356.94

4 Donors

-$356.94

Donations toward project cost

-$303.40

Donations to help DonorsChoose reach more classrooms

-$53.54

Still needed View calculationHide calculation

 $0.00

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As a teacher-founded nonprofit, we're trusted by thousands of teachers and supporters across the country. This classroom request for funding was created by Mr. Short and reviewed by the DonorsChoose team.

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