Costa Rica Day 4 Afternoon

Mrs. Formisano has already detailed our morning activities, but the afternoon and evening were just as action-packed! After lunch, which consisted of delicious pasta and garlic bread, the students were given roughly an hour of free time until 2 PM. Many students chose to walk to the "mall" in the village about a half mile away to buy candies, soda, and snacks. Then it was right back to science! We were arranged into new groups based on our research interests - the general categories were frogs and ants. We spent roughly 2 hours developing our hypothesis, prediction, and experimental design as a group. After a quick coffee break accompanied by a sweet pastry to refuel, we continued refining and revising our final experimental designs by creating a PowerPoint to present to the students, teachers, and scientists later that evening. We enjoyed dinner at 6 PM that included beef, potatoes, vegetables, greens, and a dessert that was similar to cheesecake. Then BACK TO SCIENCE! It was now time to present the research plans to the group. Between 7:30 and 10 PM each of the 8 groups presented their separate research projects, all of which addressed different questions regarding leaf-cutter ants, frogs, insects, and bacteria or fungus. The projects are highly interesting and ambitious, and you will be hearing more about them in the future. No spoilers!

Here is Pinto showing us the schedule for the day - stations in the morning, experiment design in the afternoon, and presentations at night.

 Happy students walking back from the mall during free time after lunch with snacks in hand!

We apologize for not having pictures of the afternoon and evening work - we were too busy sciencing! More pictures tomorrow!

Shelby Hammonds and Michaela Reinhart