At Penn-Trafford High School, students in Mr. Babik’s Biology classes recently completed an outdoor investigation designed to explore the relationship between living and nonliving components of the environment.
As part of the project, students collected data from three different settings: bare ground, meadow, and wooded areas. They began by measuring the temperature in each location and then used instruments to calculate the relative humidity at various distances from the ground.
The purpose of the experiment was to compare conditions across the three areas and determine whether biotic factors (living things such as plants and animals) influence abiotic factors (nonliving conditions like temperature and humidity).
Through their hands-on work, students gained a deeper understanding of the interactions within ecosystems and how living organisms can shape their environment.
Amber Kostyak, Maxom Daykon and Liam Lehneke worked together to gather data from the meadow environment
The class measures different heights from the ground
Haven Rindt spins a hydrometer to measure relative humidity
Midnight Stout, Lillian Hawk and their teams measure humidity in a wooded area for comparison