Special : Education Workshop
Abs #
60004: Plants-In-Motion: an online teaching resource
Plants typically move and change on timescales that are too slow to be easily observed by most people. This temporal disconnect contributes to the phenomenal of “plant blindness” in which students fail to see plants as alive and therefore have a tendency to regard them as boring relative to organisms that move on time-scales humans are more accustomed to. We routinely use time-lapse methods in our research to study how plants respond to environmental stimuli. Specifically, we use time-lapse sequences to analyze how plants respond to light and gravity. Time-lapse allows us to see details of tropic responses that are often missed buy relatively simple before-and-after comparisons. We also use time-lapse with microscopy to study cellular processes during light-induced chloroplast movements. Time-lapse techniques not only provide a powerful means to analyze plant growth and development for basic research, they also provide an excellent way to demonstrate the dynamic nature of plant growth and development. The “Plants-In-Motion” web site was developed to provide a collection of time-lapse movies of plants with the idea that seeing plants move in a more accessible time-frame may help captivate the interest of budding plant biologists and to help instill in the general public an appreciation of plants as dynamic creatures capable of perceiving and responding to their surroundings. The site is mainly a repository of plant movies that are freely available for non-profit educational purposes. The movies are organized into several categories and each movie is accompanied by brief explanations of what they show. The site also contains outlines for various plant projects, general information about making time-lapse movies, some plant art, and other things thrown in just for fun.
