ingridscience

Bees can talk to each other with smelly molecules, called pheromones.

Students squeeze and sniff each of the bottles. Ask them what the smell makes them think of. (Likely lemon, banana, cheese and nothing.)

When a bee smells these same molecules it thinks of something quite different. Students match the molecule labels on each bottle with the molecules on the sheet to find out what each of these molecules means to a bee:
This might smell like bananas to you (banana smell), but to a bee it means war. This molecule signals bees to attack an intruder.
This molecule says it's moving day to a bee (lemon smell). Bees smelling this molecule swarm and move to a new hive
Feel alarmed when you smell this? A bee would (cheesy smell). Guard bees release this molecule to call for help when there is an intruder.
Although we humans can't smell this molecule (oxodecanoic acid, so use empty bottle), it is a perfume for bees. Queen bees release this molecule to attract males.

It may seem strange that other animals communicate with smell molecules. We mostly use our other senses to communicate.
Many creatures communicate with smell molecules.Dogs use smell molecules to mark territories. Ants leave pheromone molecules for each other to show the way to food.

Put 10 drops of fake stomach juice into each of two cups. Stomach juice contains loose hydrogen atoms.
Add a drop of dye to both cups of fake stomach juice. The color of the dye shows you the number of loose hydrogen atoms in the stomach juice.
How many hydrogen atoms are there in stomach juice?

Real stomach juice, like the fake stomach juice in your experiment, has lots of loose hydrogen atoms in it. Your stomach uses the loose hydrogen atoms to digest food. But sometimes stomach juice spills into the tube above the stomach. Hydrogen atoms are not meant to be in the tube above the stomach, and cause a burning feeling. This pain is called heartburn. When we get heartburn, we take an antacid.

Take a small piece of antacid and grind into a powder with the mortar and pestle. Dip a wooden stick into one of your cups of stomach juice to make it wet. Pick up some of the antacid powder with the wet stick. You only need a small amount.

Mix the antacid powder into one of your cups of stomach juice and dye. Leave the other cup alone. Keep mixing until the stomach juice changes color. Be patient — it may take a minute. Compare your two cups. What did the antacid do to the number of hydrogen atoms in the stomach juice? (Look at what colour the dye turned and infer what has happened to the number of hydrogen atoms).

How did the antacid take away the hydrogen atoms?
The antacid contains carbonate molecules. Find carbonate in the active ingredients on the antacid bottle. The carbonate molecules capture the loose hydrogen atoms to make a different molecule. (Students can build the molecules to see the reaction: CO3 + 2H -> CO(OH)2

How do antacids get rid of heartburn?
Just like in your experiment, the carbonate molecules in the antacid capture the loose hydrogen atoms in your stomach tube and the burning pain of heartburn goes away.
antacid = "anti-acid": Antacids get their name because they remove (or neutralize) acid, which is the same as removing hydrogen atoms.

Hand out a bone to each student and ask them to walk around and find others with similar bones.
Bones to hand out (or subset):
shoulder blades (2) humerus (2) fused ulna/radius (with elastic holding them together) (2)
fused front toe (metatarsal) bones (2)
pelvis (1) femur (2) tibia (the tiny fibula is absent) (1)
fused back toe (metatarsal) bones (1)
back (lumbar) vertebrae (4) and tail bone (fused sacral vertebrae) (1)
chest (thoracic) vertebrae (4 or more) and associated ribs (4 or more)
neck (vertical) vertebrae (6)

Students circle around a sheet to assemble the deer skeleton together, students adding their bones when asked. Older students can direct the assembly themselves, optionally using an image.
Students do not step on the sheet unless told to.

Start with the skull, then cervical vertebrae to continue down spine. Then add shoulder blades, front legs. Last add pelvis, back leg (part of one bag leg missing).

Discuss who might have taken the leg away (bobcat, coyote, fox, bald eagle) and imagine the scenario of a scavenger finding this big meal!
Find the gnaw marks on a bone where likely a rodent chewed. Likely shrew, mouse, vole or rat.
Find the missing tooth, and the ones that have overgrown on the other side without being worn away. They would have been digging into the gum giving the deer pain, and maybe an infection.
Discuss what happened to the skeleton once most of the meat had been eaten by other animals after it died - the decomposers and bacteria that cleaned the bones.
Draw up a food web linked to the deer as each species is mentioned.
Note all the life cycles that are linked to the life cycle of the deer.

If the students are getting wiggly sitting so long, take the skeleton apart bone by bone, asking students to find the equivalent bone in their bodies. They can stand up for much of this, wiggling each part of their bodies in turn.

The skeleton is probably a white tailed deer, the most common deer in Virginia.
A few white tailed deer facts, from this link: http://www.fcps.edu/islandcreekes/ecology/white-tailed_deer.htm
White tailed deer is a herbivore, eating green plants in the Summer; acorns, fruits and nuts in the Fall; and twigs in the Winter. They also eat fungi when they can find it.
They have few predators. Most commonly humans, sometimes fox and bald eagle.
They can run up to 60 km per hour. They are good swimmers. Their leap can be 2.5m high and 9m long.

The skeleton can be used for a comparative anatomy study, as in the skeletal system lesson plan.
Image comparing horse (similar to deer) and human skeletons, showing the same bones in each: https://i.pinimg.com/originals/64/b8/f4/64b8f401376e3cf8eb012c9de816b3c…

White tailed deer bone photos at https://russellboneatlas.wordpress.com/home/white-tail-deer-bone-atlas/

Use playdough or modelling clay to make animal prints, and optionallly your own hand print.

Measure how long the animal footprint and your handprint is, to compare their sizes.
Record the number the toes or fingers. Do they have the same number of fingers/toes as us?
Make other comparative observations.

If using stamps, look up the real sizes and calculate how much larger the real footprint is.
Optionally add a scale bar to the stamp.

Note:
Often the animal footprint is only the front part of their foot, as they walk on their toes. If so, infer how long the real foot might be.
What shows up on the bear print that does not show up on ours? Claws. (Show a real bear foot.)

Hold the bag of ice cubes, to feel how cold they are.
Then wrap them in each cloth in turn, and feel whether the cloth can keep your hand warmer.
(Note that if your hands get very cold from the ice, it will be hard to tell what the cloth does, so encourage students to use each hand in turn to give them time to adjust between each test.)

Students should find that the thicker, more furry, cloths keeps their hand warmer.
The air trapped in the thicker fibres insulates from the cold (i.e. it prevents heat from moving away from your hand).

Animal fur and feathers trap air to keep animals warm, sometimes from extreme cold.
Local animals with thick fur include bears, otters.

If available students can feel real animal fur. They can dig one hand into the bear fur and keep the other hand out of the fur, to compare, and feel how the hand in the fur becomes warmer (as the heat from the hand can't escape with the fur insulation surrounding it).

More information on animal fur:
Fur also keeps out other kinds of weather besides cold. (Wind and rain). Dig one hand into the fur and blow over it. Feel how protected from the wind it is. Dig one hand into the fur, and one not. Can you feel the drops of water in each case?

Bear fur is made of two types: find the downy underfur, and the coarse guard hairs.
Underfur is soft and dense and is the insulator.
The outer guard hairs are thicker, longer and coarser. They do insulate, but have other purposed as well: They keep out dirt, debris and insects. They repel water (bears shake just like a dog when they come out of water). They can be used to communicate. Raised hackles indicate that the bear is angry or frightened.
Bears molt annually in the early summer.  They shed both their underfur and outer guard hairs, leaving only a short, sleek summer undercoat.  Their new coat is growing in as the old one is being shed, so that by fall they have their thick, luxurious coats once again.
www.americanbear.org

This activity needs adult assistance.

Students put one index finger in a cut off glove finger, and the other in a glove finger coated in fat (vaseline).
Ask: If we put them both in some iced water, which do you think will stay warm longer?
Record your prediction. (see notes below)
Students put both fingers in the water, and wait until one feels cold. They record which stayed warmer longer.
Ask: Why do you think you kept warmer with the fat?

Relate to a bear, if relevent: When bears hibernate, and the temperature outside is really cold (way colder than this water), how can bears use fat to stay warm? They have a layer of fat under their skin.
Feel your fat under your skin by pinching your skin. Your fat is less than a cm thick. Black bears have a fat layer about 4cm thick. Polar bears have a fat layer up to 11 cm thick.

Measure the temperature of the ice water. Winter temps can go way lower than this.

Background information: heat moves through fat half as fast as through muscle or other kinds of water-based body tissue. But for animals keeping warm, passive heat conduction rates is probably less important than controlling the paths of blood flow through the body e.g. using counter-current systems. Fat tissue near the skin can survive for hours without any blood going through it.

Loop the pipcleaner under the scales at the bottom end of the pinecone, going around several turns, but leaving a stretch of pipecleaner, so it can be hung up. Spread lard on the pipcone under the scales with the popsicle stick. Sprinkle the seeds over the lard. Hang the feeders outside, near a window, so the feeding birds can be observed.
I have used plastic coated wire (thick electrical wire) strung from a window hook to a nearby tree (hung in a loop, so that it can be rotated to hang on each feeder), and between trees (with a long free end that can be used to lower and raise the line, and tie it off around a tree trunk).
Or students can take it home to hang.

Possible items to add near the feeders:
Bird identification guide. Add a tally to mark off how many of each kind of bird students spot. See the resource website for excellent bird images and bird calls.

Birds eat the seeds, which are part of a plant.