Biomass Science Projects
The term biomass has several meanings, depending on its context. From an ecologist's point of view, it means the weight of living things in a community, such as a forest or an ocean, according to the Encyclopedia Brittanica. More common is the energy producer's definition, which the McGraw-Hill Concise Encyclopedia of Bioscience describes as "the organic materials produced by plants, such as leaves, roots, seeds, and stalks," other than the parts used for food or other consumer products, like cotton.
Biofuel & Biomass Energy
Science Fair Projects and Experiments is a website maintained by Julian T. Rubin that offers free science projects, experiments and background information for students and teachers on a wide range of subjects. For middle schoolers, the site suggests a project from California that compares the energy content of pine needles and oak leaves to study whether forest waste is a viable source of biofuel. The Web page also has three elementary grade projects, a dozen other middle school projects and 15 for high school level classes.
Science Fair Projects and Experiments can be contacted by emails to: webmaster@julianTrubin.com.
Waste Gas
Science Buddies.org, a website created by the Kenneth Lafferty Hess Family Charitable Foundation, provides detailed instructions for a project it calls "From Trash to Gas," which uses a simple waste digester and gas collector to measure and compare the amount of waste gas produced by cow manure alone, a mix of manure and vegetable peelings and manure mixed with banana peels, based upon a prizewinning science fair project from Australia. Waste gas, produced by bacteria digesting organic matter, is about 50 percent methane, which is both a valuable fuel and a potent greenhouse gas when it is lost to the air.
Contact: Science Buddies
P.O. Box 5038
Carmel, CA 93921
A Dozen More
The Biomass I Science Activities in Energy and Teacher's Guide was developed by the Oak Ridge Associated Universities in 1981 to give school teachers a resource for developing lessons about biomass in both senses of the word. The projects run the gamut from measuring how different soil or light conditions affect plant growth to whether burning green or dry wood produces more energy (in the form of heat). The full 48-page document, complete with detailed descriptions of the activities, background information and discussion guides is available for downloading as a PDF document from the U.S. Department of Education's Education Information Resource Center.
The ERIC website has a contact form at http://www.eric.ed.gov/ERICWebPortal/Home.portal?_nfpb=true&_pageLabel=ContactERIC.
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