Bioluminescence

To understand bioluminescne we started by watching a slideshow of living things that exhibit bioluminescence (produce their own light or glow)


We have a TV for Wii days and I realized I can insert a flash drive to show media, which is awesome and I definitely plan to use this more in the future.

I introduced the kids to bioluminescent animals and why certain ones have this feature:

1. Defense- scare predators 
2. Visiablilty- help see in dark habitats
3. Just for show- humans have found ways to insert bioluminescent genes into common household animals such as fish 

With crayons and black construction paper, we drew some common biolumincent animals.

• Firefly
• Jellyfish
• Anglerfish
• Mushrooms
• Other insects
• Glofish

After snack we made our own glow animal/plant shapes! We followed the lab producure from a book we had called smart labs. The main ingrediants are corn starch, water, baking powder, and a glow powder that came with the lab set. You end up creating something that is similar to the consistency of dough. We used cookie cutters to make shapes, I tried to give them options of cutters most closely related to bioluminescent or glowing things( butterfly, fish, star, moon, plant)

It takes about a day to dry... Flipping them over half way would have been beniftial. Also don't leave them under direct light excessively because I think that's what caused most of ours to crack. 

The good news was, they DID glow but not great. It seems the atoms need to be heated up by shinning a flashlight directly on it... This helped them glow better. I noticed that my iPhone light worked best (high LED light?). A regular desk light wouldn't do the trick. Also you need to I somewhere complelty dark, like a closest or somewhere wth absolutely no windows.

We had a tiny amount left over, which I made into a mushroom and tested the glowing success of later at home.