“You can see photosynthesis happening.”

Today I had the privilege of presenting the Floating Leaf Disk Photosynthesis lab to a group of enthusiastic Cornell Institute for Biology Teaching (CIBT) teachers.  I really enjoyed my brief time with these folks that gave up 2 weeks of their summer to learn more biology–specifically labs that work for their students.

One of the participants, Lynn, was very familiar with the lab and had actually submitted it as one of her “favorite labs” to share, not knowing that I was going to present.  Something she said, really captures this experience and value of this lab.  She said that one of her students (one that might not have demonstrated a lot of previous interest in biology) completed an investigation of his own question about photosynthesis and reported on it in a science fair type of format.  Apparently he described the floating disk technique to his judges as

“You can see photosynthesis happening.”

He’s right and that’s what makes this technique such a powerful tool for learning about photosynthesis and  doing science.  Thanks for sharing, Lynn.

BW