Group 4 Help: Environment!

[gabyx3]

My group and I have to do our Group 4 project on something environmental (it's required by our school) and we have to use real time data. We're having trouble combining the physical and biological aspects of it (incorporating chemistry is easy). The idea we had was studying the effects temperature and water current speed had on the amount of plankton in a certain area but we're having trouble finding real time data to provide for everything we need. Should we continue to pursue the topic and find real time data (any places we might be able to find it?) or should we change our topic (any ideas?)? Any and all help will be appreciated.

[Chelleee]

uhh realistically, you don't want to drag out your group 4 project over a long period of time.

with your idea, how exactly did you plan to execute it?

also can you please clarify what you mean by "amount of plankton" - do you mean amount of plankton present in the sample? amount of plankton ALIVE in the sample by the end of the experiment?

starting with effect of temperature:

as in did you plan to take water samples containing plankton from who knows where and then proceed to dump a couple on a hot plate and heat it up? (i'm being half sarcastic by the way...)

water current speed:

how do you plan to change this? remember you have to control as many variables as you possibly can -> treat this g4 project like an IA prac, you get marked for your use of equipment!

i would probably ditch this idea since 1) i don't do physics, 2) it seems to hard to manipulate without changing a billion variables

if i HAD to choose, i would go with the temperature one.

you really want to go as simple as possible! when we did our group 4 (which was done last term in the time frame of a DAY since that's all our coordinator gave us), we purposely worked with PLANTS because they are clearly visible to the naked eye

the only thing i would suggest is to rethink what exactly you plan to do (like a method/procedure) for both temperature and water currents rather than just coming up with a general topic.

p.s - it just occurred to me, how exactly do you plan to record the "amount" of plankton?