Field Trip to SDSU Evolutionary Biology Lab

5th and 6th graders visited SDSU Professor, and TCPS parent Dr. Elizabeth Waters’s biology lab to learn Dr. Waters and her graduate students study how plants adapt to low-water, high-heat stress. We visited her lab, growth chambers, and green house, and learned the variety of places that scientists study plants — out in the field, in highly controlled growth labs, and in green houses. Students also were able to use very high tech light meters to measure how much light plants get in particular locations, and then take that information into the growth chambers to measure how the particular plants Dr. Waters studies take in light and use it to photosynthesize. Students were impressed by the carnivorous plants shared by Bob, who is in charge of the greenhouse, the giant freezer that is so cold it stops all atomic activity, the centrifuges, micro-pipettes, lab benches and lab notebooks graduate students are using in their studies.