New sounds coming up soon!

I’m lucky to live in San Francisco, which is a great city that is surrounded by water on three sides. So people here really care about the environment. And they’re excited that I’m using science to find the real truth about what chemicals and bacteria can be found in both grass and synthetic turf soccer fields. Here are some pictures of the awards I received from our Mayor Gavin Newsom, and our Supervisor Bevan Dufty for winning the Kids Science Challenge, and for using science to find out answers that will help our city government to plan what is best for the environment in our city.

Carrots - turf, tap and grass water-fed

In February I started growing carrots from seed in peet that was soaked in synthetic turf runoff water, grass soccer field runoff water, and plain old San Francisco tap water. I wanted to see which plants would grow best from which water. Here it is late June already! I have just finished the third grade. And my plants are finishing their growing cycle. The results so far are: synthetic turf carrots – 9 inches tall. Tap water carrots – 6 inches tall. Grass water carrots – 5 inches tall.  Dr. Adina Paytan at UC Santa Cruz will examine the plants, their carrots, and the soil they have grown in. They have been watered every day with water from their type of field (or tap water.)  I was surprised that the synthetic turf carrots have grown faster and taller than the rest.

It was very exciting to see me on TV explaining my project. You can see the video from KGO TV by clicking here.

I’m looking forward to accomplishing this big study.  My water samples are at Dr. Adina’s lab in UC Santa Cruz, and we are starting to get preliminary results from the first 10 samples.  I’ll let you know as soon as we get all of the results back.

My sister and I did a 30 minute spot for Radio Disney. They said it will be on Saturday morning. Sorry I don’t know what time but she did say it would be  early. We had a great time. She made it very easy for both of us. I think it was because she was great but it might be because I have done a lot of interviews. Either way I highly recommend it.

Today my class made skateboards that Create A Skate gave us. We sanded, and sanded, and sanded. We put finish on them. They look great and next we get to decorate them. The class has learned about skateboards, the math to build them, and about wood strength. You should ask your school if you can do the Create A Skate program. It is great fun and didn’t seem like school at all.

My whole family got up and we did a segment or the News LIVE!!! Yikes. It was fun and I got to talk about everything but it was weird too because she didn’t talk to me before so I didn’t know what to think.

We got home from CA at about 1 in the morning. We had so much fun I learned so much. I have to be on the local news in two days at 5:45 am. That is early.

Well it took me a while to write this (sorry)

 Day 2: We went back to Professor Schmitt’s House to work on some more experiments. One of them was the surfboard that you can skate to the beach. We couldn’t finish that because Jenna Wolfe showed up to see what we were doing and she filmed a spot for the Today Show. Can you believe that? Anyway they did some interviews. Then after lunch some professional skateboarders came by to play in the Professors skateboard park (Bucky, Kurtis, and Darrell). They are really very nice and they are amazing to watch. Thanks to Micheal Bream I can do 3 or 4 tricks on my board. Micheal made me a special Gravity board for light riders. It is so cool. My friends went crazy for it when I got home. But back to the pros and Jenna Wolfe…They all skated for us and Jenna even gave it a try. She was really very good too. Micheal chased Professor Schmitt around the bowl with the camera, on skateboards. They are so much fun. So look for the Kids Science Challenge on the Today Show in a couple of weeks. Thanks for swimming with me Cole and I hope you had a great 10th Birthday…… Lindsay