Fun fur lab

I used fun fur yarn in a lab class today.

Yes, Fun Fur. The yarn 'serious' knitters love to hate. (I don't *hate* it, I just think it has a limited range of applications...I would not want a sweater knit of it, for example).

It was kind of a last-minute inspiration. I had designed a "new" lab (based on a conversation I had with someone over the summer) where the students, within a set of constraints (there is a "maximum possible" weight, a "minimum possible embryo/endosperm weight") come up with model seeds...which we then disperse. There are scores for how far the seed travels, and scores for "viability" (essentially, weight of the embryo/endosperm...small seeds don't tend to survive harsh conditions as well as big ones).

The original plan was to use tissue paper, toothpicks, and Parafilm (kind of like a stretchier version of plastic wrap - it is sort of a paraffin-like material (Not sure if it's actual paraffin). And then I thought, what if they want to put dandelion plumes on the seeds? So I got out the big ball of twine I have on hand - but that's kind of coarse and heavy.

So I grabbed a ball of Fun Fur...and had it available. (Only two groups used it).

Interestingly, most people went VERY elaborate - lots of designs based on maple samaras and such. The winning designs? Very simple seeds, basically just the embryo wrapped in something to make it oval, seeds that were comparatively heavy for their size - because of the way we "dispersed" them (a gentle toss off a balcony), they rolled.

For next semester, I want to add a "wind dispersed" trial, where I set up the box fan and drop the seeds in front of it. And maybe rig up a "water dispersal" thing with a trough of water with a gentle current in it.

(And this is how watching Top Gear re-runs has warped me...I wanted to assign point values to each group following the arbitrary formula that those sort of BBC shows seem to use....and I was very tempted to refer to one seed as "ambitious, but rubbish." But I didn't.)