Students design and conduct experiments to determine what environmental factors favor decomposition by soil microbes. They use chunks of carrots for the materials to be decomposed, and their experiments are carried out in plastic bags filled with dirt. Every few days students remove the carrots from the dirt and weigh them. Depending on the experimental conditions, after a few weeks most of the carrots will have decomposed completely.

Concepts

bacteria, decomposition, engineering, fungi, stem, decomposers

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Additional Tags

nutrient recycling, soil microbes, integrated teaching and learning program and laboratory, teachengineering

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Classroom Considerations

• Knovation Readability Score: 5 (1 low difficulty, 5 high difficulty)