Students will explore the path food takes along the Farm-to-Table Continuum. They will begin on the farm and investigate food safety issues during processing, transportation, at restaurants and supermarkets, and finally, in their own homes. Teams will identify how food can become contaminated along the continuum and develop and present strategies for preventing contamination at each step.
Students will discover the five culinary functions of eggs by completing a cooking lab comparing recipes with and without eggs. Students will see how eggs leaven, bind, thicken, coat, and emulsify our foods.
Students will use the Engineering Design Process to develop and construct an aeroponic garden to grow a food crop. Students will develop and apply an understanding of plant anatomy and physiology related to plant growth and ultimately discuss the possibilities and limitations of using vertical farming to produce our food.
Explore the complexity of global commodity chains that link the production and consumption of agricultural products. Discover how economics, politics, infrastructure, and other conditions affect the distribution of food throughout the world.
Students identify the importance of plants to human life by surveying their home and neighborhood for plant products used for medicine, aesthetics, fuel products, fiber, and food.
Students will distinguish between natural and artificial selection and use a student-centered learning activity to see how science and genetics have been used to artificially select apples for specific traits like color, texture, taste, and crispness.
Students will recognize that plants, like people, require essential nutrients to be present in the right amounts in order to be healthy, use reference materials to diagnose plant nutrient deficiencies, define fertilizer as a type of “food” for plants, and appreciate that fertilizers are used to replenish nutrients in agricultural soils.
In this lesson, students will test for plant-available soil nitrogen and learn how farmers use this test to precisely match fertilizer application to meet crop needs and reduce the amount of nitrogen left in the soil.
In this lesson students will measure the pH of a soil sample and learn how pH affects the availability of nutrient uptake by plants. Students will determine if and how their soil pH should be modified through the application of soil amendments.
In this lesson, students will learn about solutes and solvents and will use serial dilution while investigating parts per million—a term used to describe the nutrient concentration of a fertilizer solution.
In this lesson, students will use their knowledge of solutes, solvents, and parts per million to analyze fertilizer options that meet plant nutrient requirements while evaluating costs associated with managing plant nutrients.
Students examine different types of soil that have been mixed with water and allowed to settle. Next, they work with a soil model to investigate its components (sand, silt, and clay) and learn how the properties of these components affect the passage or retention of water through the soil and the amount of air in the soil.