Growing With Science Blog

This week we are continuing our series at the beach. Check previous posts for sand science and seawater science.

Have you ever found something plant-like on the beach and wondered what it was?

Seems like a lot of beach plants are hard to classify. Are they algae, a sort of seaweed, or are algae and seaweed the same thing? Are algae plants or do they belong to a different kingdom? These are all good questions, and scientists are just beginning to answer some of them.

Many of the plants and plant-like creatures you see at the beach are technically algae. For example, kelp are giant brown algae.

Algae come in many colors, like these red ones.

The green algae are often found in freshwater ponds and lakes.

Ready to learn more? Here are some suggestions for activities to investigate algae. I’d love to hear your ideas, as well.

Activity 1. Make an algal collection

Gather algae on the beach and keep it moist in seawater. If you have never worked with algae, the Hawaii Botany Department tells you how to make an algal herbarium. Or if you don’t want to disturb nature, you can take close up photographs of what you find.

Once you have a collection, visit these websites to help you identify what you have.

Michael Guiry’s Seaweed Site covers all things seaweed and the identification of algae.

Life on the Australian Shores and Algae: The Forgotten Treasure of Tidepools are also helpful, although the later tends to get a bit silly at times.

You may be wondering why anyone would care about algae. Turns out, algae are important in a lot of ways.

Activity 2. Investigate food chains.

Algae are the basis for aquatic food chains in both seawater and freshwater.

If you are unfamiliar with the concept of food chains, this book is a great introduction to food chains and food webs. It has been a family favorite.

Who Eats What? Food Chains and Food Webs (Let’s-Read-and-Find-Out Science, Stage 2) by Patricia Lauber and Holly Keller (Illustrator)

Find out as much as you can about food chains in the oceans. Gather, print and cut out pictures of ocean critters to illustrate your own posters of food chains or webs.

Activity 3. People eat algae too.

You have probably eaten algae and didn’t even know it. Carrageenan, a thickener used in a variety of foods, is extracted from a red alga. For more information, see http://encarta.msn.com/encyclopedia_761573848_3/algae.html.

Once you have an idea what to look for, head to your kitchen and check to see if you have any foods that contain carrageenan or other products made from algae. Look at the cookbook listed below (or a similar one), and make some of your own dishes using algae. Asian markets are often an excellent source of ingredients.

If you are interested, a fun research project would be to investigate all the ways people use algae for food throughout the world.

Activity 4. Other important uses for algae.

See if you can make a list of other uses for algae. Here are some I found:

Algae are thought to make much of the oxygen we breathe.

This video shows a camera zooming in on the leaves and then the cells of a common water plant, Elodea. In the cells you can see the chloroplasts moving around. The chloroplasts are the sites of photosynthesis, the process that turns sunlight into chemical energy we can use as food. A by-product of photosynthesis is the release of oxygen. Although Elodea is actually a vascular plant, the process in green algae is the same.

If providing food and oxygen weren’t enough, now scientists have discovered ways to use the oils found in algae to make biodiesel. In fact, algal oils can be made into jet fuel. See this previous post for more information about algal research at ASU.

If you are interested in algae, here are a few books you might want to try:

The Seaweed Book: How to Find and Have Fun With Seaweed (Paperback) by Rose Treat and Randy Duchaine (Illustrator, Photographer)

For Adults:
Seaweeds of the Pacific Coast: Common Marine Algae from Alaska to Baja California by Jennifer Mondragon and Jeff Mondragon

The New Seaweed Cookbook: A Complete Guide to Discovering the Deep Flavors of the Sea by Crystal June Maderia, Josephine K. Spilka (Foreword)

Have fun with some seaweed science and let me know what you discover!

Edit: To check the rest of the posts on beach science, follow these links:

Sea Horses and Other Fish

Shore Birds

Tide Pool Invertebrates

Beach Science- Boats

Beach Science-Sand

Beach Science-Seawater

In a previous post, I mentioned two Arizona State University scientists have a project to grow algae to convert into fuel, particularly jet fuel. They made the news again this week because they just got a $3 million-dollar grant to start a pilot project. Exciting stuff!

Follow the link to the newspaper article:
Algae-to-fuel work gets $3 mil
ASU spinoff believes organisms key to renewable energy for jets
by Ken Alltucker – Sept. 2, 2008 12:00 AM
The Arizona Republic

Nothing is more fun than a science-based field trip. We went on a field trip on Friday to Arizona State University’s Polytechnic Campus. After getting off the bus, our first stop was the Laboratory for Algae Research and Biotechnology, where we met Dr. Milton Sommerfeld, a scientist who studies algae.

You might think algae would be pretty boring. After all, it is that stuff that turns your pool green or grows on the sides of your fish tank, making it hard to see the fish. It is slimy and sometimes really smelly. Who would spend their life studying something like that?

We learned algae is actually exciting stuff and may have a huge impact on our future. In fact, that green goo may soon be golden. It turns out certain kinds of algae contain a lot of natural oils in their cells. The oils can be extracted and turned into a form of biofuel (fuel that comes from recently living things).

Algae have a lot of advantages over other sources of biofuel. First of all they aren’t a crop, so making them into fuel does not take food away from people (although one of the by-products of the extraction process is a protein powder that may some day be used for food, too.) The algae can be grown in wastewater from farms high in manure or other forms of water that may not be suitable for drinking. They can be grown in areas that aren’t good for farming. And they produce more oil per acre than soybeans.

Of course there are costs too. The algae grow in large tanks, sort of like fish tanks. Electrical pumps are needed to circulate the water in the tanks. Dr. Sommerfeld’s group is looking into a way to produce the electricity using solar panels. Extracting the oil also requires some energy, but as the techniques are modified and perfected the process will likely become more efficient.

After visiting the laboratory and seeing all the tanks full of brightly colored algae, it is not hard to imagine cars, trucks and planes running on biofuel in the near future.

For more information, see this recent article from Arizona State University’s Research Magazine.

September update: Check for more recent post and link to newspaper article.