October 13

Today was the first day of our Term Project for Biology 111.
I began the project by extracting a sample from a water source using a pipet and deposited the sample into our miniature aquariums marked in a color code to indicate lab, table, and seat number.


For me, Water Source 5 from the Mead's Quarry in Knox County on Island Home Avenue, image and information found here http://botany1112009.blogspot.com/

I filled the aquarium almost to the top, leaving a few centimeters of space. After water had been deposited, and the small fibers found in the water had settled at the bottom of the aquarium, I selected two small, about one inch long pieces of two plants, known simply as plant A and plant B, and placed the two samples into the aquarium.

Plant A is an Amblystegium varium from the natural spring at Carters Mill Park on Carter Mill Road in Knox County. Plant B is a carnivous plant from the south shore of Spain Lake east of Sparta TN in White County grown in tanks outside of the Hesler Biology Building at the University of Tennessee
Information source here http://botany1112009.blogspot.com/.

Once I had completely set up the aquarium, I placed it under a microscope and began to record my first observations.

Some of the things I observed were:
-A roundish, golf ball like structure containing hundreds of green, swimming cells. The structure itself was pale white and was not moving around. Dr. McFarland described this to me as a trap leaf.
-Dark black donut-shaped structures. Non moving, spread thinly throughout the aquarium.
-small, fuzzy cells, many in number, spread throughout the aquarium. Again, non moving.
-Another round, golfball like structure, this time green in color, possibly due to the trap leaf containing hundreds/thousands of more green cell organisms.
-small, transparent organisms swimming around freely within the aquarium

These were all the observations I made for this week.