We are very excited to be participating in Tomatosphere 2010. The students will be planting some very special tomato seeds this week!
Tomatosphere is a Canadian-based research project involving more than 12,000 classrooms of students (“Tomatonauts”) across Canada and the United States. The project enables students to make a contribution to a real science experiment involving research related to the development of seeds with a high germination rate for prolonged space travel.
Students will work with two packages of seeds – a control group and a group of seeds that were taken into space to the International Space Station aboard Space Shuttle Endeavour. The seeds spent two months on the Station before returning to Earth in late September 2009.
The students will observe:
• The time required for each seed to successfully germinate.
• The percent of successful germination in each group.
• The seedling vigour as determined by height measurements.
• How similar seedling vigour is in each group.
Check out the Tomatosphere website here http://www.tomatosphere.org
Your blog has inspired me to create one for my classroom. You have given me many ideas as to how I might use it in the educational setting. I would like to congratulate you on a job well done!!!
Thank you for the lovely comment! It has been a real learning process for me. We started at the end of January and have been having a lot of fun. The kids enjoy it and I have had a lot of positive feedback from several parents.
Good luck with your blog. We would love to check it out. With our kids in the same grades maybe we can have them communicate with each other if you are interested.