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Plant Experiments, Persian Wars Debate, and Alpine Adventures (Session 2, Week 3)

Nov 17, 2024
2 min read

Updated: Oct 10, 2025


Week 3 is behind us, and we have a lot to share!


This week's Quest topic was Plants, and we worked on our first biology experiment. We started with the capillary experiment, putting food dye into a cup of water with a flower and documenting the progress along the way. Next, we moved on to the Plant Osmosis experiment, where we placed a piece of potato in a cup with no salt, 2 grams of salt, and 4 grams of salt, observing how the potatoes became more rubbery over time.


For Genre this week, we researched our biology hero and started brainstorming questions to ask them later on because we are going to do an “interview” with them. This means we will be asking ourselves questions about our heroes and cutting them together to make a full interview. 


As a part of Civ this week, we discussed the Battle of Marathon and The Persian Wars. We answered questions such as: 

Imagine you are a Greek soldier as the Athenian army approaches.  You face near-certain death, but your effort may help further the goals of freedom. Do you:

  • Accept your fate, knowing that you will die for a good reason OR

  • Run and live the rest of your life


It sparked a lively debate about what we would do in that situation and whether the learners on the fight side would actually stand their ground. 


On Friday, we had our first Alpine day for the session! We started by doing a challenging hike all the way up to the Palisade Lookout. After that, we played house cup games, such as Capture the Flag, with our houses on the field. In the afternoon, we learned how to carve wood with Zach., the outdoors mentor.


Next week, we will dive into animals and write our interview scripts!


Located in Closter, NJ, Acton Academy Bergen County offers an immersive, studio-based learning experience.

Learn about our learner-driven approach and how we guide real-world growth through mastery-based education.


13 Comments


Jie
4 days ago

ozil goal ai was a fun read this week, especially the potato osmosis setup with the no-salt, 2-gram, and 4-gram cups. I like that the kids documented the potatoes getting rubbery over time rather than just checking once at the end. Curious whether the food dye in the capillary experiment reached the petals by day two or took longer than that.

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1 wix
Sep 04

floor plan generator seems like a great tool for visualizing the different salt concentrations used in that osmosis experiment. It's fascinating how the potato pieces became more rubbery with the 4 grams of salt. I'm also curious to see how the interviews with the biology heroes turn out.

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1 wix
Sep 03

GLBtoOBJ sounds like a fun way to organize all those experiment notes and interview ideas. The potato osmosis experiment seems particularly hands-on, and I can imagine the kids getting really into observing how the texture changes. It's great that they're connecting the biology work directly to their hero research like this.

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Jay
Jay
Jun 27

This look at week 3's plant experiments via ZEnhancer really highlights the hands-on approach. The detail about the potatoes becoming more rubbery in the higher-salt cups makes the osmosis concept so clear.

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Joey
Joey
Jun 26

Reading about the potato osmosis experiment with the different salt amounts at PopEmote reminds me of how effective hands-on learning really is. It's great that you're connecting those practical observations to your biology hero research for the interviews. That kind of active engagement with science makes the concepts stick so much better.

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