More questions to spark your inner scientist

Questions about herons

1. How does a heron use space differently (or are there differences) over the course of a year (breeding, post-breeding, wintering)?
2. How many trips to the nest does it take a heron to raise its young?
3. What is the variation in flight distance exhibited by a heron?
4. What are UTM coordinates?
5. Can we estimate the flight speed of a heron?
6. How much area does a heron use at different phases of the year?
7. What are the different types of habitats used by herons to feed?
8. What sort of food is found in the areas used by herons?
9. Where do herons typically construct their nests?
10. What are the breeding and wintering ranges of great blue herons.
11. How many eggs do great blue herons lay?
12. How many young are typically fledged by great blue herons?
13. How can a heron be aged?

Questions about heron habitats

1. What sorts of places do herons use for food?
2. What sorts of places do herons use at night or to raise their young?
3. What do herons eat?
4. What kinds of places produce the food that herons eat?
5. What is an ecosystem?
6. What is ecosystem productivity?
7. What influences ecosystem productivity?
8. Can people influence ecosystem productivity?
9. What is a wetland?
10. Are there different kinds of wetlands? If so, what are they?
11. As sea level rises, what happens to a salt marsh island?
12. As sea level rises, what happens to salt marshes on the shore?

Questions about flight

1. What is form?
2. What is function?
3. What do form and function have to do with bird flight?
4. Do all birds fly the same way?
5. Do all birds feed in the same way?
6. Do all birds fly?
7. What measurements are useful for describing a bird's wing?
8. What else would one have to measure about the bird to make the wing measurements useful?
9. Does a bird use only its wings to fly?
10. What is lift?
11. What is drag?
12. What is pitch?
13. What is yaw?
14. What is roll?
15. Explain the X, Y, Z coordinate system.
16. What is the force of gravity? What units are used to measure it?
17. What is velocity? What units are used to measure it?
18. What is acceleration? What units are used to measure it?
19. What is energy? What units are used to measure it?
20. What is force? What units are used to measure it?
21. What is work?
22. What, if anything, do energy, force, work and power have to do with birds?
23. Where does a bird get its energy?

Questions about heron diets

1. What do herons eat?
2. What makes up the body of a fish?
3. How would you find out how much energy (calories) there is in a fish?
4. What are proteins?
5. What are carbohydrates?
6. What are lipids?
7. What are nucleic acids?
8. What is water?
9. What are nutrients? Why are they important?
10. What are micronutrients? Why are they important?
11. Do various substances differ in their energy content?
12. What is foraging?
13. What is feeding?
14. What is digestion?
15. How are herons different from you in how they digest their food?
16. How is bird poop different than human poop? Why?

Questions about technology and tracking birds

1. What are latitude and longitude? How are they measured?
2. Why do we have seasons?
3. Why would seasons be important to an heron?
4. How do we launch satellites?
5. What does GIS stand for? How is it used?
6. What does GPS stand for? How is it used?
7. What instruments on a satellite are used to locate a transmitter signal on the Earth?
8. How is the distance between a satellite and a transmitter on Earth determined?
9. What does VHF stand for? What does UHF stand for?
10. What are the units for frequency?
11. How does a transmitter work?
12. How does a receiver work?
13. What is Movebank.org?
14. What is a battery?
15. Are there different kinds of batteries?
16. How do batteries work?
17. What is a circuit?
18. What is electricity?
19. How is electricity generated? Is there more than one way?
20. What are photovoltaics?
21. How are photovoltaics used to track herons?

Questions about Geography

1. Define the study of geography? What does this mean?
2. Why is geography important for herons? Why is geography important to people?
3. Define north, south, east and west.
4. How do we determine direction?
5. How does a compass work?
6. Where does the sun rise? Where does the sun set?
7. How does the sun appear to move through the sky?
8. Does this change over the course of a year?
9. What is the shape of the earth? How do you know?
10. Did people always think this way about the shape of the earth?
11. What is a paradigm shift?
12. What is climate and what determines it?
13. How does climate influence how we grow food?
14. How does climate influence ecosytems?
15. What is a biome? What is a biogeographic realm?
16. How did the Earth form?
17. Why are the continents shaped the way that they are?
18. What is plate tectonics?
19. What are the Eastern, Western, Northern and Southern Hemispheres?
20. What is a continent?
21. What is an island?
22. Does the shape and orientation of a continent influence the climate on that continent?
23. What is a country? What is a state or province or region? What is a village, what is a town, what is a city?
24. How might the country a heron finds itself in influence its wellbeing?
25. What dangers may a heron experience over the course of a year?
26. What language is spoken in the country where you find the heron you are tracking?

10:54 AM The nature of the project with regard to the Arts… Here we examine writing, literature, theater, and music. Questions related to the Arts, English, Environmentalism and History

1. Can you imitate the way a heron walks?
2. Can you pretend you are a heron? Show the class?
3. Write about the year in a heron's life.
4. Imagine you are a heron and write about it.
5. Tell the story of a heron in a play or dance.
6. What sort of call does a heron make? Can you imitate this? Could you use an instrument or instruments to imitate a heron call?
7. What value do cranes and storks have in certain Asian cultures? Name these cultures and countries.
8. How do different cultures value nature?
9. Do animals have spirit? What have various authors written about this subject?
10. What is environmentalism? What is Environmental Science?
11. Who was Aldo Leopold? Read "A Sand County Almanac" and write a book report.
12. Who was John Muir? Describe his life and his writings.
13. Who was Theodore Roosevelt? How did he influence the environmental movement in the United States?
14. Who is Henry David Thoreau? How did he influence the environmental movement?
15. Who is Rachel Carson? How did she influence the environmental movement?
16. What influence do environmental writers have on herons? How does their influence work?