Planaria

David stopped by this afternoon and showed us his "science project", actually a very involved project on the hardening properties of concrete, which he presented to his graduate class last week. I don't begin to understand all his data, but the Power Point presentation, complete with animated graphics and charts, was mighty cool!

Back in seventh grade David signed up for the Science Fair elective. He spent the first quarter learning how to do research and planning a project, and the second quarter collecting data and writing up his project. David's project involved planaria, tiny worm like creatures seen above. I've actually forgotten the premise of the project, but I'll never forget his problems with the project. Seems David couldn't keep his planaria alive long enough to do his research! Several times different types of water were experimented with. Several times his science teacher re-ordered planaria from planaria.com or rescueDavid's project.com to no avail. David had a wonderful research paper, great poster....but no data.

So what did David learn from this project?

• David learned to never again do a science project using any living thing. He went to "state" with his eighth grade non-living project!
  
• David's fruit flies survived intact for his required high school biology project. Ever cautious about keeping experimental creatures alive, David was paranoid about making sure he was available to tend to those fruit flies at the critical time periods in their brief lives.
• David majored in engineering!
• David now makes a living dealing with concrete, bridges, "crack houses" (not what you think), and other structures. They can all have serious problems....but staying alive is not one of them.

Most importantly, David learned to persevere when things aren't easy... and that has served him very well!

We parents get incredibly wrapped up in our children's struggles and failures, but don't always recognize until much later how those struggles and failures can develop just the skills that will be needed in their future work.

For more information about those wonderful planaria, check out this site I found in researching this blog :-)

http://prweb0.voicenet.com/~ginette/planaria.htm