The Orchard Garden

In primary school, we started a naturalization project where a group of students were able to plant trees and maintain part of the garden. But as went by and the students graduated, the garden began to lose its initial purpose. Trees stopped being planted and taken care of, and a lot of them were removed. Over the years later I went to check on the project and all that was left was the brick amphitheater. This is where “how many seats we needed for a concrete amphitheater,” really reflected onto me. After the project disappeared the only thing that remained was the concrete and brick from the amphitheater. Its not that the amphitheater was a bad idea, but it shows that humanity can leave footprints. If the amphitheater is not taken care of, the erosional processes needed to remove the amphitheater could be thousands of years and still the concrete would become apart of the rock record in that area. It would be hundreds of thousands or even millions of years now engraved into the geological rock history of that area! That possibly some man-made materials that take up space will need, and could be there, for years. Far into the future where some future generations will need to repair and maintain the structural integrity or maybe must deal with the damage done by landfills or chemical spills. Society doesn’t always think about what happens in 100 years or 1000 years and how the geological landscape can chance around houses and buildings.

Teaching physics in a garden would be tricky. I would love to do light and optics and what you could do with mirrors to reflect sunlight onto plants in places where light would be tricky to reach. I think it would be an awesome challenge to apply light and optics (do, di, focal length, mirrors and lenses) unit to help plants get sunlight. Some problems that could happen are that the plans may receive too much light, or maybe the sun may not rise at all (but could apply some artificial lights). There are lots of problems that could happen but in this case these problems can become learning opportunities. Setting a plant at the focal length of a concave mirror might set it ablaze, so it may be better to find a spot further away but close enough to the focal length, so it still gets a strong amount of light.

Gravity has a very interesting effect on plants. For example, tomato plants love to grow tall and have very deep roots, so installing trusses helps the integrity of the tomato plant so it has something to wrap itself around while growing. Introducing the idea of gravitropism, the plants growth response as gravity acts onto it.  Possible have a group work on plants that require a truss and students may wonder why their plants are slouched over and is it harmful towards plants? Is it possible that the plants are simply supposed to grow this way? Or maybe is gravity causing damage to the plants? Another possibility is if the tomatoes (or any other heavy fruits) that are growing on the plant causing the plant to droop to the side? Is it the weight of the tomato? What is pulling on it? These kinds of questions can be associated with open inquiry, a student spots a problem and begins to wonder what is causing this and what kind of solution is viable?