Scientists at work
The black light Mitchell Price keeps in his room at home is going to come in handy for his science project in Tim Soliday\'s fifth-grade class at McCormick\'s Creek Elementary."I\'m working on a project to see if UV rays will grow plants as well as the specialized lights we use here at school," Mitchell said. "I\'ll put them in a dark room with the different lights to see which will grow best."Michael Knapp and Torrey Wallace are going to put dividing walls in a fish tank, with holes for the fish to swim through. They\'re going to test the fish\'s memory by feeding them at different ends of the tank and seeing if they remember to swim to the correct end.Torrey got the idea from MythBusters, a show on the Discovery Channel. "I didn\'t get to finish the show," Torrey said. "That\'s why I want to do it."Each of the students in Soliday\'s class will do an independent science project this semester. Soliday and third-grade teacher Fred Walden are well known around the school for their interest in science. Both teachers have numerous classroom pets, with well over a dozen snakes and several tarantulas between them.They\'ve worked to gether to build up the school\'s science lab, which is equipped with microscopes, test tubes, a pond stocked with Koi and a painted turtle, numerous aquariums and a giant terrarium that\'s home to a boa constrictor.Last week Soliday\'s students made up their own microscope slides so they could observe brine shrimp and their eggs up close. They were looking to see which environments - more or less salty - enabled the eggs to hatch.They\'ve already established their own aquariums, with the responsibility of caring for the animals that live in them.Soliday said he ties science in to other subject areas he teaches. Students write in their science journals, draw pictures, do math and do lots of hands-on work."It\'s so much more interesting than a textbook," he said.