Day 2- Pellets,Sawmills, and Molding

The first place we visited was a pellet making factory that made Haimer's Hot Ones.  The factory was started because their company had a saw mill that had to have their sawdust cleaned up because it is enviromental waste.  It cost them 1 million dollars to clean it up.  They did not want to pay that bill again so instead they came up with an ingeius idea.  They decided to go into the pellet business. This not only solved their problem of what to do with their waste, but it created a new product they could sell (the pellets).

 The process Starts by trucking in sawdust. The sawdust comes from their sawmill and sawdust they buy from other sawmills.It takes 30000 tons to make 15000 tons of pellets. It is divided by species of wood. Then it is dried at about 1800 degrees depending on the species. 

The sawdust then goes into the factory and is heated to the melting point of the lignin in the wood. The lignin holds the pellet together. The melted sawdust is squeezed through a machine kind of like playdough (see picture to the right of the opened machine). The new pellets then drop down into bin below (Picture to left)

Next the pellets (machines make 100-180 tons a day) are bagged. Every 50 bags are checked to make sure that there is no more than 3.2 percent dust.  If there is more they slow down machine and that takes care of problem. Next it is sent down to the machine in the video that puts bags on pallets (pallet weighs 2000 lbs). This machine loads 20 tons per hour while workers could load 10 tons and workers kept quitting or tranfering to other jobs. Next a machine wraps it in plastic and the process is done. It is great that we are finding ways to use the waste in an economical way.

First Day at Cathedral Park

Today is the first day of our Forestry and Rail Project.  It is exciting to work with this group of teachers, and project members. We went to Cathedral Park.  Cathedral Park is a virgin (unharvested) hemlock forest. It has spongy acidic (3.55) soil.

The main tree found in the forest is the hemlock.  There is also a number of oak trees maple trees and magnolia bushes. One of the interesting things was that there was not much foliage on the ground. This was because the taller trees were blocking the sun and were taking the nutrients out of the ground. When it rained it was almost like being in the shelter because not much of the rain reached us on the ground. 

                                                                                                                                                                                              

Trees that had fallen,died and rotted supplied the nutrients for new plant growth.
Finally we measured the board length of a hemlock located at N39*19.593 W32.213.It had a circumference of 129 inches, 52 feet tall. The board feet was 1441.  A board feet value for a hemlock is $3.20, so this tree harvested would be worth $4610! Is it any wonder that forestry is a big business.



Measuring Board Feet

My son and I went to Ritter Park to measure board length in a tree.  In the picture I was measuring the circumference(182inches) of the tree (not hugging the tree).  I then paced off 66 feet in my case that is 29 paces (a pace is a right step and a left step). Next I used the clinometer to find the angle up to the top of usable wood and down to the ground (63%). All that was left was to do a little math to find that the trree had 18 board ft.

Four Pole Creek Water Quality

On April 21,2012 the forestry and rail project went to Ritter Park on a field trip to practice skills needed for our trip. We identified trees, measured board feet of a tree and measured the water quality of Four Pole Creek.  The creek is a small creek that runs through Ritter Park and at this time it was low. many of the small creeks that run into it were dried up. On this day it was raining. We pulled the water out of the creek next to the picnic area and measured it in the shelter.

TEST                  MEASURE     Q-VALUE    WEIGHT     TOTAL Q
DO                     5.6 MG/L             50              0.32               16
TEMP.               15.1 C                  30              0.19               5.7
TDS                  109 MG/L              84              0.13              10.92
TURBIDITY       99.5 NTU               17              0.15              2.55
PH                     7.08                     90              0.21              18.9
                                                             
                                         OVERALL QUALITY                  54.7

According to the wqi quality scale the creeks water quality is in the low end of medium or average(51-70)

A boat from fire

I had always read about boats made using fire, but have never been able to picture it. I went to Plimouth Plantation.  The Wampanoags(http://www.plimoth.org/what-see-do/wampanoag-homesite) put wet clay 6 feet up and burn underneath. The clay protects the part above it. It was an efficient way to cut it down especially because when the Pilgrims first came it took 5 Englishmen to get their arms around the trees.The trees they used were white pine, chestnut and oak. They could make a boat that could carry 40 men and measured 60 feet long and 6 feet wide. After they had burnt down the tree they burned the top side to the right length. Then they built fire in the middle.  In the pictures there is only a small fire because they want to prolong the burning but the Wampanoag would do it the whole length leaving a hollowed out canoe.  They controlled the fire with water and would scrape the burnt part with clam shells. The shells made ot smooth and hard. They would go down to the widest part (the middle).  This would balance the canoe. One advantage to burning out the middle is that it would drive the sap to the edges making it more wayertight. I love to go to hands on historical places because It always helps me to better understand what I have read. I have included pictures of the winter houses because it was interesting how they use the bark almost as shingles. Finally, for my students I have the answer to your questions about what their football game was like.

The Greatest Railroad Station On Earth

This is the railroad staion  used by Ringling Bros and Barnum and Bailey Circus.( http://www.ringling.com/ ) starting in 1960 when the circus moved to Venice, Florida.  The circus would get off the train in Venice and parade down the street to their winter quarters.  The station was part of the first succesful railroad in Sarasota County Florida built by the West Indies Railroad and Steamship company in 1903.   In 1918 the railroad was extended to Venice because the Manasota Lumber Company built a sawmill so lumber could be shipped to the Tampa shipyard.

The station also has a statue of Gunther Gebel-Williams who may have been the greatest lion tamer of all times.  I remember when the circus came to town being so excited to see Gunther Gebell-Williams.

School in the Park- "We Are Learning"

On Wednesday 4-18-12 we had class in the park. We wanted to give our students experience with material that they were learning about in the classroom.  We went from 9:00-1:00. We had approximately 80 students that we divided hetereogenously so that we had students of all different levels in each group. We had three projects that we worked on. We did a water quality lab,figured out the board length of a tree in the park, and filled out a senses worksheet that was used to write a descriptive paper and a haiku.
       Mrs Booten worked on geometry to get the students redy for the board length activity. I taught the students to use the probes.  We prcticed with the temperature probe by taking the temperature of water at room temperature and then recording change when ice added. We practiced with conductivity by comparing the conductivity of distilled water to salt water ( the students were amazed with the jump in conductivity. This surprised me).  We learned about the ph probe by getting a reading on distilled water then adding lemon juice to make it acidic.  The students then had to get the ph back to the original level. We practiced using dissolved oxegyn and turbidity using Ohio River water.  The only probe we calibrated was the turbidity probe because of time constraints and the age of students.  I decided that I needed to give the students the figure from table 4.  The students use tables enough to get q-values and I decided that it was better to take this chart out to allow students to be succesful.
        The field trip went great!  The students worked hard and were excited.  We had a light rain at times and it was a little chilly but I heard more about how much fun they were having instead of complaints about the weather. I had the science group and I was very happy at how independently that they were able to work with the probes.  I made sure that the Vernier units were set up ahead of time to allow them to follow along with the worksheet.  The students were in 5 people groups which allowed the students to help each other. If they could not figure out we stepped in.  I thought we would need a lot of help on this activity but the board length actually needed the extra help. The board length group was next to me and it was really cool seeing the students spread out in the park doing measurements on the trees.  We had many helpers including TISes curriculum coaches and of course Steve.  Most of the help was needed with the board length activity because the groups were smaller and the trees were further apart.  The last activity took place in the rose garden. I did not see this activity but was told it went well. They said the rain was helpful because the roses look even prettier. The teachers talked about how could you describe the looked of rain on a rose.  The descriptive papers are looking better than the ones they had done in the classroom.
            After the trip we talked about the educational field trip and the teachers thought it was so succesful that they not only want to do this again next year but they want me to set up one for the fall anyone have any ideas. I am posting the worksheets we used in my pages under field trip worksheets