Plants for Space X

GBE Immersion Day La Trobe University

On Friday the 25 of July, our class went to La Trobe university for the Space X immersion excursion. We moved into our first activity designing and creating a base for humans and plants on the moon. 

I found this activity fun and engaging because it sparked my creativity. After sharing our ideas with the class, we went out for a break. Next, we headed to the dry lab. We started by rating the sight, smell, touch, and taste. The class's favourites were cucumbers and tomatoes. We moved on to planning a plant to grow in the spaceship. 

Our group drafted a plant called Super Sugary Apples. It was as tall as a tomato plant and the super sugary apple was full of nutrients but was very sweet. Following that, we had lunch outside. 

After lunch, we had our final activity in the wet lab. We began by wearing lab coats and lining up in pairs. When it was me and my partner selected some plants to put in our salad. We then mixed and smashed our salads up. 

Afterwards, we did some experiments to find oil, protein, glucose and starch. Finally, we went back to school. Overall, I had a fun and educational experience. It was a unique experience where we applied our creativity and teamwork skills. I highly recommend it to students. I am looking forward to taking this opportunity again.

Kingsley 7J

On Friday the 25th of July, the LEAP class went to the La Trobe University to learn about some of the necessities of a Mars settlement. There were 3 different sessions throughout the day, the first session was about the architectural design if astronauts were to grow plants on Mars. 

We first learned about what kind of needs the plants we wanted to grow have, as we discussed it, the professors gave us a couple sheets of paper and assigned us to make a small model of our structural plant growing habitat. The second session was about the type of food that could be grown on Mars, our task was to create a food that could be grown on mars with all the nutrients and proteins that humans need. 

In the last session we learned about how to check the nutrients and protein of our choice of salad, they showed us three different ways of identifying the nutrients. Overall, I think it was a great experience and I thought of it as a great way of thinking about what I might want to do when I go to university.

Maggie, 7J

Last Friday, (the 25th) the LEAP students from year 7 and 8 had an excursion to La Trobe University in Bundoora. Regarding our topic on plants being consumed and grown in space, we participated in lots of activities surrounding that. 

We designed areas for farms to start, learnt about how people would rather eat something that feels, smells and looks nice and tested our own salads to see the nutritional value of the dish and if it was suitable for real life astronauts. 

The day was so fun and interesting as we got to be part of something that could impact new exploration for longer journeys in space. Jack Borysiewicz

We walked into the university and our jaws dropped, they had a FOODCOURT and IGA. The university was humongous, so many buildings. Anyways, moving on to the stuff about the actual excursion. We went to Space X immersion. It was a fun opportunity to build up on our knowledge and thoroughly explore/share our findings from an experiment that we had did in class. 

At La Trobe Uni, we were allowed to let our creative mind roam freely. Coming up with new fruits/vegetables by changing certain characteristics or including characteristics from other existing plants was an engaging activity. 

Then we moved on to a space salad, in which we mashed some vegetables and took samples about how much protein and glucose it contained. It was disgusting yet very fun. After some work in the lab and creative ideas we had moved on to the building component of this excursion in which we used different materials to create a setting where plants could grow, outer space. Overall, it was definitely an opportunity I would never want to miss out on, an activity in which I connected socially and academically. 

Harseerat, 7J

The excursion to La Trobe uni was really nice, and we got to learn about many things, such as astronaut diets, foods that can go to space and the nutritional value of fruits and veggies. Kaiden Chan, 7J