Flathead High School International Baccalaureate students studying biology, environmental systems and societies and physics recently collaborated to design labs that explored issues around the Flathead Valley.

Students took up challenging questions such as how fertilizers affect runoff, how snow density affects melt time, how pharmaceuticals affect plant growth and how the shape of a greenhouse affects plant growth.

“It was fun to see what they came up with, what they see as being issues,” International Baccalaureate biology teacher Megan Couser said.

Once students formed hypotheses they set out to research and gather data within the valley.

Projects had to meet three objectives: Use technology, raise awareness of a moral, ethical, social, economic or environmental issue and demonstrate the link between science disciplines and the scientific process.

Junior biology student Johanna Lembke was part of a group that tested air quality by measuring pH in melted snow, while junior biology student Chloe Clevidence’s group tested wind speed to determine the best location for a wind farm.

The science classes, a combined 70 students, formed small groups mixing students from different disciplines.

“We took what we knew from each of those classes and incorporated it into the lab,” Clevidence said. “We had four biology students and one physics student, so we thought looking into clean energy would be a good way to hit both of those topics.”

Students brainstormed ideas and in many cases learned they had to create an alternate plan early on.

“We originally had a different lab for turbidity, but since we encountered bad weather and negative temperatures we decided it would be unsafe to collect samples from frozen lakes,” Lembke said.

Turbidity is the presence of high sediment in rivers or lakes, a sign of erosion.

“We were going to learn about the Hungry Horse Dam,” Clevidence said. “We found most of the power doesn’t stay in the valley, so we had to look at a different source of energy.”

Each group had roughly four weeks to collect data. Through trial and error, students navigated their way through the scientific method. Couser said teachers are pretty much hands-off during the project.

“It’s not so much about their results,” Couser said. “It’s about them finishing and saying, ‘we should have done this differently based on the time of year’ or ‘We should have done it in a different area.’ That’s the real part of science — trying something out and figuring out what worked, what didn’t and how can I keep this going?”

Clevidence and Lembke said they encountered challenges, whether it was weather, scheduling or instruments, and learned that going through the scientific method takes a lot of hard work.

“Our readings were inconclusive,” Lembke said. “What we thought was going to happen — and what we knew was going to happen — didn’t happen at all. The snow by the highways was closer to normal than the ones that were way far away from human and car access. And areas with more vehicular and more human interaction would be higher in pH due to pollution.”

Lembke said the group discovered it might have happened because the five locations where they took samples (around Woodland Park and in baseball diamonds across from the park) over five days were fairly close together. Timing and weather also factored in.

“The time we took the test — directly after school — that was another thing that kind of went wrong, for us because the snow was freshly fallen,” Lembke said. “We needed a longer timeframe.”

For Clevidence’s group, the challenge was accessing the right instruments.

“We had to make an instrument to measure wind speed out of paper cups, so it was a little hard to figure out and make it accurate enough to get good data,” Clevidence said. “[Professionals] have digital versions of what we made, but we didn’t have any available to us.”

To capstone their research, students presented their findings to freshman biology students.

“It helped us have a better understanding of what we did for our lab — what we did wrong and what we did right,” Lembke said. “We really hadn’t done full lab before this project and I thought it was really neat to finish it. From start to finish you get to see the whole scientific process, see the time that goes into it and I have a greater appreciation for it.”

Clevidence said her outcomes came out as expected.

“We tested five different places. We stood outside Flathead High School, went to Herron Park, Glacier Park International Airport, to the top of Lone Pine and by Flathead Lake. We wanted to choose different geological features,” Clevidence said.

“We did find the wind was fastest by the airport. The second fastest was on top of Lone Pine, but when we analyzed our data, the top of Lone Pine wouldn’t be a good place to have a wind farm because it’s on top of a mountain. Something you have to pay attention to with wind farms, they can’t line up behind each other because they will interfere with how they work.”

Both students had revisions in mind if they redesigned projects on the same topics.

“I would look at a more accurate way to measure data,” Clevidence said.

Lembke said she would have spread out data collection sites, among other things.

Couser said while the labs may not be perfect, “they understand what a great lab looks like and what it means to do research.”

Reporter Hilary Matheson may be reached at 758-4431 or by email at hmatheson@dailyinterlake.com.