Tomatoes…fiery color and cool completeness

How does a tomato go from green, marble-like sphere to juicy red brilliance? Chemistry, that’s how. In the case of tomatoes, the plant bathes the fruit in ethylene molecules when the fruit reaches an edible size, and this hormone triggers the fruit to ripen.

We are into week eight of the weekly, online, video series “Chemistry Now,” and the chemistry of food moves into the garden as a source of interesting video and lessons. As we’ve written before, please view the video, try the lessons, and let us know what you think.

By the way, Pablo Neruda penned an “Ode to Tomatoes,” the source of our caption for the picture above:

“…the tomato offers
its gift
of fiery color
and cool completeness.”

I can’t think of anybody who better represented both fiery and cool personas than Neruda. Props to whoever knows why Neruda’s tomatoes showed up juicy and ripe in December; add your comment below.

Photo: Manjith Kainickara

Through the Chemistry Now series, NSTA and NBC Learn have teamed up with the National Science Foundation (NSF) to create lessons related to common, physical objects in our world and the changes they undergo every day. The series also looks at the lives and work of scientists on the frontiers of 21st century chemistry.

Video: “The Chemistry of Tomatoes” (one in a 6-part Cheeseburger Chemistry series) outlines the role ethylene plays in ripening tomatoes (and other fruits); the role of lycopene in color change; and diffusion of gas.

Middle school lesson: The Ripening Tomatoes lesson gives students an understanding of how tomatoes ripen and what conditions allow them to ripen the best and allows students to observe a chemical change that happens in nature.

High school lesson: In this Ethylene Gas Investigation, students design and conduct an experiment  to observe the ripening of tomatoes under different conditions, evaluating the effectiveness of various strategies for ripening tomatoes including the role of ethylene gas.

You can use the following form to e-mail us edited versions of the lesson plans:

[contact-form 2 “ChemNow]

Here’s a taste of NSTA San Fran. More on this later, but many of the tech tools are open-ended allowing for student/teacher defined uses. Overall, the future looks like a fun place to teach!

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H_mT8D0eKjk[/youtube]

Imagine—you submit a proposal for a session at the NSTA conference, and you’re ecstatic when it’s accepted. And then you learn that you have an 8:00 AM Sunday morning time slot, in competition with early departures, church services, hotel brunches, and losing an hour to daylight savings time. Will anyone come to my session?
Steve Bane from Phoenix didn’t need to worry! The nice crowd who attended his presentation on science vocabulary learned some new strategies to help students learn and use key terms. (Last minute funding issues prevented his colleague Jodi Sanchez from attending.)
After the 8:00 session, I was talking with Kristen Shelly from the Hollis Public Schools in Oklahoma. Her school sent 5 teachers to the conference, and they had to take photos of themselves with the presenters as documentation. More importantly, they are expected to share what they’ve learned in workshops and meetings. So the impact of the conference is magnified by all of the sharing of experiences and resources that will happen over the next few months.
I’m sitting in the NSTA bookstore right now, and it’s crowded with attendees making last minute purchases. I hope they left room in their suitcases!

Congratulations to all of the teacher-presenters at NSTA—to those who were willing to share their ideas and experiences. It’s a quantum leap from the classroom to the national stage, but in the sessions I attended, my colleagues rose to the occasion.
For example, Greg Benedis-Grab from The School at Columbia University (NY) shared ideas he uses for sharing digital data in the elementary science classroom. (Greg does more than presentations—look for more of his ideas in an upcoming issue of Science & Children.)
I was blown away by the work of chemistry teacher Tanya Katovich (from Shaumberg IL). She is working with Northwestern University to create remote online laboratories. These are different from simulations, in that students manipulate actual devices. She demonstrated (live) an investigation that uses a Geiger counter located in Australia. The students get real data in tables and graphs. Check out the iLabCentral site for more information about this free resource.
Who would think that a session on Friday afternoon at 5:00 would be packed? Those who managed to squeeze into Using Interactive Notebooks for Inquiry-Based Science were treated to a dynamic presentation by LaTonya Walker, Helena Easter, and Leslie Hayes from Richmond VA. They showed the audience how to help middle school students organize and use notebooks. They also showed how to scaffold activities through several levels of inquiry.
The deadline for proposals for next year’s conference in Indianapolis is April 15, 2011.

The NSTA conference was featured in blogs from Edutopia:

• Jeff Goldstein’s keynote
• Some thoughts trends in science education (also from Edutopia)

NSTA Emeritus Executive Director Gerry Wheeler shared his thoughts on the challenges facing science education in the coming decade in the Robert H. Karplus Lecture. He noted that although students’ lives outside the classroom are changing dramatically, but their lives inside the classroom have not kept pace. Wheeler said future visions of education are being held hostage to the “tyranny of tradition.”
Wheeler called for more emphasis on student-centered activities, movement away from isolated learning, formative assessment, and more. He said “disruptive innovations” would be needed to really change education, although he expects those innovations to first gain traction outside the mainstream education setting.
At the start of the his talk, Wheeler shared some of his memories of Robert Karplus, theorectical physicist and education leader. As he wrapped up, he said, “What we neeed night now is a Bob Karplus,” someone to lead the next wave of disruptive innnovation in education.

Featured speaker Larry Lowery’s lively presentation at the San Francisco NSTA conference highlighted research findings about how children learn to inspire teachers to incorporate new practices in their classrooms. Lowery encouraged teachers to further expand students’ opportunities to learn and explore using their various senses.  He showed a functional MRI image to illustrate the lit-up areas of the human brain that can follow from the simple sensory experience of touching an animal’s fur.  When a student holds a classroom pet, examines a leaf through a hand lens, or hears a bird call, multiple areas and receptors in the brain are activated, providing a rich network of connections that deepen the learning experience. In an engaging illustration, Lowery suggested that viewing a single image of a single leaf doesn’t teach us anything.  However, viewing two different leaves side-by-side invites comparisons that capitalize on our brain’s tendency to learn through examining differences and contrasts. Students who look closely enough at two different leaves to see varying edges and vein patterns may never again walk in the woods without noticing and appreciating nature’s wonderful array of leaves and trees. As Lowery said, “the beauty of the world is enhanced when you see the world the way a scientist sees.”  Lowery is professor emeritus at the Lawrence Hall of Science, University of California at Berkeley, and is principal investigator for the Full-Option Science System (FOSS), the widely used K-8 science program funded by the National Science Foundation and developed at the university.  Early in his distinguished career, Lowery studied with Richard Stebbins and was part of the team at Berkeley that developed the Animal Coloration program, a classic resource for activities on the evolution of concealment that NSTA Press published in an updated and revised edition. Lowery also edited the popular NSTA Pathways to the Standards Elementary Edition, which provides a wealth of inspiring classroom vignettes and tips for teachers who work with our youngest scientists.

One thing about attending a NSTA conference, you get to try local cuisine, as well as an occasional unusual treat. I just spoke to this teacher from Pittsburgh who told me he sampled a scorpion in the exhibit hall. The chef didn’t recommend any sauces so as not overwhelm the scorpion’s natural flavor. It also sounds like the big ones can be juicy. But that was just one part of his NSTA experience!
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tnXJQNstDIg[/youtube]


In addition to science educators, you also run into some interesting characters…

Some attendees have more than two legs

Johannes Kepler -- Up close and personal