Cape Fear Community College

Recently, I took my Bio 112 students out on the Cape Fear River on board one of our school’s research vessels.  Jason Rogers, the chair of CFCC’s marine tech department was the leader of our trip.  He gave us this opportunity for a hands-on field trip  where we learned about different species of fish, crustaceans (the very delicious shrimp and crabs), and even invertebrate parasites!  It was an amazing experience that we are very grateful for and we are now more educated about the importance of marine research and the benefits of maintaining healthy aquatic ecosystems.

Want to know how big Proxima Centauri is compared to an LCD pixel?  Or how about the size of a human egg compared to say, the hepatitis virus?  Check out this amazing interactive website that shows the relative size of things as you travel from the largest to the smallest objects in the known universe, and perhaps beyond….

P.S. make sure your sound is on – the music is epic!

http://htwins.net/scale2/

“Earth and sky, woods and fields, lakes and rivers, the mountain and the sea, are excellent schoolmasters, and teach some of us more than we can ever learn from books”  John Lubbock

Every semester, I take my students to various “outdoor classrooms” where we can appreciate not only individual organisms but also the beauty of natural ecosystems that are all around us. Visiting these areas allows me to teach students that all of life is interconnected and that we have a responsibility to care for our Earth.

The following photos were taken at Airlie Gardens.