By: Anderson Prater Science Fair is still a long way down the road for 9th and 10th graders at HFHS (Local Science Fair is taking place on December 10th, 2018) but for some the experiments have already begun. Tenth grader Luke Chapman started testing the water of the Grindstone river this month. Luke is testing for organisms in the Grindstone river, specifically “benthic macroinvertebrates” which are organisms without a backbone and large enough to see with the naked eye. He is trying to find the numbers of these macroinvertebrates at different sites along the Grindstone river to tell if the river has a healthy number of living organisms. Luke’s tests consist of stringing nets at various places along the Grindstone river. Then, upstream from these nets, he disturbs the riverbed by kicking the rocks and mud. This disturbance causes the organisms that were resting on the riverbed or on rocks to become detached and float downstream into the nets. Luke takes the nets out of the water and picks out the organisms and puts the macroinvertebrates into alcohol to identify them and document how many of each species he has collected. In addition to the organisms, Luke has found many Crayfish and Mayflies, which he said is as expected. Luke plans on testing more sites on the river and we at the Jaguar Journal will follow his experiment until it is finished.
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September 2019
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