This semester my driving question was, “How can I experiment and figure out a way to cut down on pollution in freshwater areas like lakes and ponds?”. I feel that I was able to almost finish answering that question this semester. The part of my project that I am most proud of is sticking to my project and pushing to find the answer even after my experiment failed. It made me feel accomplished to stick to one thing for the entire semester and to keep persevering.

If I could do my project over again I would re-do my experiment. I feel like if I would have used a different type of container that my results would have turned out the way I expected and that my experiment would have worked. In this project I learned that I should try new things more often because at the beginning of the school year I didn’t even want to be in the class. This class has opened me up to try new things and I am going to try to keep that going into the future.

Thanks for reading, Trace.

In the past couple of weeks I have made lots of progress. I emailed Mr. Pate about why my project didn’t work and he emailed his sources at ECU. I am now emailing them to see if they have any suggestions to help me with my research. My experiment failing was a major setback but I am managing to continue by trying to figure out where I went wrong. Hopefully I can figure it out and release my findings to researchers and people concerned about their water.

 I plan to share my findings to my target audience through my blog. Over break I need to finish up my project by finalizing my annotated bibliography and getting my board ready.

Thanks for reading, Trace.

My progress on my last project has come to a roadblock.  In the second 6 weeks I conducted my experiment on activated charcoal and the pond water samples.  I just received the results back from when I sent the samples to the AG Center and it ended up that the results didn’t end up how I predicted they would.  In fact both nitrogen and pH levels went up significant amounts. I don’t know what I am going to do for my  final project yet.  If I find a way that my experiment can help people with research I will  share it with them, through them seeing the blog and getting in contact with me through the blog.

Thanks for reading, Trace.

For this last 6 weeks my driving question, “How can I experiment and figure out a way to cut down on pollution in freshwater areas?”, is staying the same. My “why” for all of  my passion projects have been that I like to fish and water pollution makes it hard to fish and it harms the fish and organisms that live in the freshwater habitats.

My SMART goal for this 6 weeks is to create a presentation that shows my findings from my research and experiment, that also shows whether activated charcoal works at soaking up pollution. I can measure whether I meet my goal by whether I finish my project by the end of the 6 weeks.

My biggest obstacle will definitely be time management with my results taking a while to get back. I plan on getting past this by planning ahead and sticking to my plan. `

Thanks for reading, Trace.