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Friday In Service

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Brian Cunningham

Monday 09 October 2006

I gave a short in-service to the Biology department about ALBA data loggers on Friday afternoon. We have had data loggers in the department for a while but few staff have had the time to discover just what can be done with them.

I explained what all the components were, briefed the staff on what the different sensors looked like, how to connect them to, and run the software on, a laptop and then demonstrated three experiments.

The first was very simple one using the Carbon Dioxide (CO2) sensor to measure the difference in levels of the gas in inhaled and exhaled air. It takes only a few seconds and the resulting bar graph gives a great visual representation of the increased levels of CO2 in the exhaled air.

For the second demonstration I simulated a biology practical in which the enzyme catalase is investigated, the end product being oxygen. I used the oxygen sensor to detect an increase in oxygen level in a plastic container.

The alba data loggers have the capacity for up to four sensors to be used at the same time so for the third demo I used a combination of the oxygen and carbon dioxide sensors to show how respiration effects the levels of these gases in a sealed container.

To finish off I showed how the loggers could be used in their remote mode. This feature enables them to be disconnected from the PC and so can be left in a variety of locations to capture data over a period of time. I had left an experiment to run the previous evening, so demonstrated how to download saved data and how to produce a graph from the information that was remotely gathered over a period of ten hours.

As the session went on the Biology staff came up with interesting and novel ways of integrating the use of the data loggers into the syllabus, with some of them realising that they are not as difficult to use as they previously thought.

Hopefully the technology will get more use now and enhance the already excellent learning and teaching experience currently had by the pupils that visit the biology department of Musselburgh Grammar School.

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