BioBusBen

I spent the day with a file, sand paper, and baking soda, and a few jugs of distilled water, doing some maintenance on our battery bank. These are the batteries that allow us to save up solar power for use on a rainy day, and really it is time to buy a new set, but that would run about twelve hundred dollars that we don’t have right now. Our bank is made of eight Trojan T-105 deep cycle batteries, known as the most reliable, long lasting deep cycle batteries around – given proper care. And we’ve taken real good care of this set, regularly cleaning corrosion off of terminals, checking water levels, and equalizing the cells. But after over 5 years of hard use – freezing cold weather, lots of vibrations from a bouncing bus, and at least 500 charge-discharge cycles, these batteries are ready to start a new life as lead paper-weights (actually, the lead will be recycled for use in new batteries). But they can still store up enough energy for an entire school day without complaining too much, so for the moment they’ll have to do.

Of course, the guys at Farber we’re hard at work today. They put down a wood sub-floor, laid down and glued in the new blue rubber floor, finished new cabinets for the wet lab, and got about half-way through the new bench-top in the computer classroom. Check out the pictures below. Tomorrow is the final day, and I can’t wait to see how everything comes together – it is already starting to look amazing.

Most of the morning I spent in a meadow on the farm, the lows of cattle occasionally rising above the sound of a gentle breeze and patter of light rain. There was little time for daydreaming however – I spent my time under the tutelage of Donovan Farber, learning how to shoot a composite hunting bow. Donovan’s friend owns the farm, and it abuts an area of old forest, habitat to a number of animals, including deer, turkeys, and wild boar. I really enjoyed target practice with the bow – I haven’t practiced archery since I was 8 at summer camp. I didn’t do too badly, though I had to stop after a short while because my muscles gave up! Bows have gotten bigger since I was a kid.

The strongest feeling I had all day was drawing out an arrow embedded 8 inches into our foam practice target. For a split second, as I grasped the arrow shaft and it slid slowly from the styrofoam block, I envisioned kneeling above a freshly killed animal, bloodied, dying. The image itself, while disturbing, also fascinates me. Where would this come from? I have never hunted in my life, I certainly have never pulled an arrow from anything living (or dead -  when I was 8 we used wood targets and the arrows never penetrated more than a half inch). Where would such a strong vision come from? Is it possible some evolutionary memory is embedded inside me from my hunter ancestors? Rationally, I guess it’s more likely I’ve just watched Lord of the Rings one too many times. But that flash, with a feeling somewhere between triumph and repulsion, is still with me hours later.

Donovan and I then forded a small stream and the trail up a hill, carrying a climbing stick and deer stand with us, as well as a number of containers and tubes for sample collection. We spent the afternoon erecting the climbing stick (a type of ladder for climbing trees) and attaching Donovan’s deer stand (a seat a hunter uses to sit in a tree). Donovan will return next weekend and spend 6 or more hours a day perched 15 or 20 feet up in the tree, silently waiting for deer to wander by on the nearby path. If he kills one, he will butcher it and use the meat for food over the winter months. While he hadn’t managed a kill last year, he says it is worth it just to sit in the woods for for long periods at a time, watching and listening.

After the stand was up, Donovan took a practice shot, and I collected some soil samples from the forest leaf litter. I am trying to figure out how to collect the slime mold Dictyostelium from the wild, after growing it from mail order with my intern Ryan all summer. It was getting late, so we headed back down the hill, collecting a few water samples and driving back to Columbus while the sun set orange and blue under late breaking rain clouds. On Monday, when I get back to the Farber shop and the BioBus, I’ll get to see what I found.

Speaking of the BioBus – you wouldn’t believe what it looks like right now! Friday morning, we removed almost everything from the interior, and by Friday afternoon the improvements were already visible. Check out the photos below, and keep checking this blog (http://blogs.biobus.org/) for our progress.

Thanks for reading, and please keep leaving your comments and sending me mail – I love hearing from you!

Ben

Ric and I visited the Farber Specialty Vehicles warehouse in Columbus today and were treated to the first round of Pimp My Ride – BioBus style. About 10 Farbers and their associates came onto the BioBus and began a frenzy of measuring, drawing, and brain storming, working with Ric and I to start the process of making some major improvements to the interior, including an expansion of the microscope lab and installation of stadium seating in the computer lab.

Got to get to bed – have a long day of teaching tomorrow in Akron, where we are now. But I’ll be back in Columbus tomorrow to start the work on the BioBus, and I will make sure to keep you updated on the progress!

Yesterday we spent the day at Cold Spring School, a K-8 Indianapolis public school and we tried something we hadn’t tried before  - we were visited by two 8th grade, 7th grade, and 6th grade classes, and we taught a different curriculum module to each grade level. I know – wild and crazy! We explored temperature with the 8th graders, cell biology with the 7th grade, and used Daphnia to study ecology with the 6th grade students. We managed the different lessons well, and I think Ric and I are really hitting our stride teaching on the BioBus. We were joined throughout the day by pre-service science teachers from Butler College as well as observers from our hosts at the Indianapolis Museum of Art, and it was nice to have their feedback.

The highlight of this day came from Ben Palicki, the Cold Spring teacher who organized our visit. After one of his classes finished the temperature curriculum, he was hopping up and down with excitement! “I can teach the students theory out of books, but when they actually see what’s happening on the microscope, they just get it.” This is exactly what we hope to do – help reinforce what teachers are doing in their classroom by providing hands-on demonstrations of concepts. Success!

After-school, our wonderful hosts from the Indianapolis Museum of Art brought us back to the museum, where we had a really nice discussion about how to integrate the BioBus into the new 100-acre nature park they are developing. We also discussed interesting new ways to integrate art and science on the BioBus, for instance making connections between the important role light plays in both painting and microscopy. It seems that every place we visit we make more and stronger connections, and I am sure the BioBus will be back to the mid-west, perhaps sooner rather than later.

Heading off now to the Orpheum Children’s Science Museum to work with the Girls Do Science Club and then open up to the public. It is a great feeling to be back home, with a chance to give back to the community that helped make me who I am – the best homecoming I could ask for.

Signing Off, Ben

Alum Creek, located just north of Columbus, was a really nice change from the truck stops and Walmart parking lots we’d been staying in.  The beauty of the BioBus is our ability to just “roll up” to a place and be ready to go- in addition to our state-of-the-art microscope lab and internet-ready computer lab, we have a fully functional kitchen on board.  We were able to cook a really nice meal and relax under the stars.  Of course, we got some water samples from Williams Lake while we were there, which we used today during our classes at Olentangy Liberty Middle School.

Today was an amazing day!  We taught our physics module, which focuses on the microscopic meaning of temperature & its implications on unicellular life.  The kids at Olentangy were really enthusiastic, and so were their teachers.  Mr. Griffiths, an 8th grade science teacher, taught (with demonstration!) the “Molecule Dance” to all his kids.  I have to give credit here to my 8th grade science teacher, Mr. Kramlik, who as far as I know invented the molecule dance.  It’s a physical demonstration of Brownian motion and how it relates to phase changes in water.  While Mr. Griffiths was outside doing the dance, Dr. Ben was in the lab demonstrating the visual effects of Brownian motion with microscopic polystyrene beads.  Small enough to be affected by molecular movements, these beads are a great way to view the motion caused by thermal energy.  The third section of each class was in the Computer Lab with me, where we talked about the implications of Brownian motion on unicellular life: bacteria, roughly the same size as our polystyrene beads, are so small that they have to expend considerable energy just to counter the forces of Brownian motion.

We closed the day with a return trip to The Hills Market, where we gave back to them the cutting board and knife which they SO generously offered to let us borrow for our camping trip.  On the way there, I baked some fresh cookies with the pre-made cookie dough they sell in their store ($6.99 for two pounds!) to present to them.  On the whole, it was a friendship well formed.

Ben and I are just about to turn in here at the home of Linda Duke, one of our fine hosts from the Indianapolis Art Museum; she graciously offered us her house for the night we are here.  Tomorrow we’ll be at Cold Spring Middle School, where we’ll be teaching our physics, cell biology, and ecology modules to 6th through 8th graders.  It should be a great day, as we have a whole team of science teachers from Marian University joining us for the day.

Cheers,

Ric

Can you guess this animal's name? (Hint: it's not Herbert)

After pulling the BioBus up a curvy drive to this central Cleveland charter high school, Ric and I began to set up the BioBus lab. What pride! While I am the first to admit that the BioBus is a bit rough around the edges, our microscope lab is the envy of many university research groups. When the first students arrived, we split them into 3 groups of 8-10 students each. The first group received a tube containing a strange organism – see the attached picture of it as seen at 40 times magnification. Only 2 millimeters long, this tiny animal swims with a jerky, saltatory movement. The second group came on the BioBus and followed Ric to the computer lab, where he discussed the ecology of this unappetizing arthropod. In the microscope lab, I led the students through the preparation and observation of a microscope slide, zooming in on a beating heart, squirming eye, and pulsating intestines.

The students were enthralled by this simple animal, and many complained that class was too short. Unfortunately time was limited as we had 6 full classes to teach that day. The most clear sign of our success came when a student, lagging behind after the bell, asked me how long she would have to stay in school to become a Ph.D. scientist. Oh no! How do I answer this question without turning her off from science completely?! After explaining that after college she would need to take at least 3 years, and probably longer, to do her thesis, she made my heart jump, exclaiming, “that’s what I want to do!”

After school, Wayne, the teacher who hosted us, took us to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. We got to see Johnny Cash’s tour bus (not rough around the edges), George Clinton’s Atomic Dog boots, and John Lennon’s “Sergeant Pepper’s” suit. WOW!! We then all drove South to Akron, where Wayne gave us comfy quarters on a couch and inflatable mattress. While I meant to post this last night, a deep sleep overcame me as soon as my body was horizontal.

That’s all for today. Ric and I plan to post on alternating days from here on out until we return to NYC, so stay tuned! Also, check our progress on the live GPS feed via our website, updated every 30 seconds. Oh, and if you’re reading this on Facebook, remember you can go to blogs.biobus.org to subscribe and comment directly.

Signing Off,
Doc Ben

We had a nice greasy day pumping oil into the tanks and tweaking the veggie system, but it’s “all systems go” now!  That physics degree must really be something, because Dr. Ben is as good with a wrench as he is with a microscope.  Our fully functional vegetable oil fuel system will get us all the way west and back on less than 50 gallons of diesel fuel (diesel is necessary for starting and shutting down the engine.  More on Wikipedia).  Thats almost 2,000 miles! Waste vegetable oil, or WVO, is a recycled, renewable energy source.  So next time you’re munching down on some tortilla chips or a crispy egg roll, think of us!  Many thanks to Taqueria Y Fonda for donating all the oil.

Our first tour date is Tuesday at Horizon Science Academy in Cleveland, OH.  We will be teaching several high-school biology classes about interactions between organisms in an ecosystem, including habitat, survival relationships, and energy flow / trophic levels.  It should be a good one!

It’s been a long day.  I rescued my amplifier from our storage unit so we’ve got some good tunes here on the road, and I’ll be checking in with you all every day or so.  Keep track of us via GPS on our website mainpage, and tune into the BioBus Daily News for updates from the road!

Ric Becker, signing out.