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Experimental Approaches in
Plant Physiology
1. Plants and Communities

Autumn Quarter, 2003

website last revised: 7 November 2003

H&CS, Plant Path, Plant Biol. 604.01
4 Credits

Instructors:

Dr. Jim Metzger
Room 348 Howlett Hall
( 292-3854
(E-mail)

 Dr. David Barker
Room 226 Kottman Hall
( 247-6258
(E-mail)
Teaching Assistants:
Barbara Fair, 224A Howlett Hall, ( 688-4891, (E-mail)
Shin Gene Kang, ( 446-1970 (cell), ( 292-9116 (office), (E-mail)

Office hours: a) call-in and take your chance, or b) call or E-mail for an appointment

Purpose of the Course

This course is designed to acquaint students with experimental and instrumental approaches to the study of physiological processes and their implications at whole-plant and plant-community scales.

Organization

  • Class meets Tuesday and Thursday 1:00 to 3:48 (and additional hours as required)
  • Usually we'll meet Tuesdays in Howlett-Greenhouse 117 & Thursdays in Kottman 334, but will also be working at Waterman Farm, Chadwick and the Howlett Greenhouse
  • The website for this course resides at: http://hcs.osu.edu/hcs604_1/index.html

Objectives

Participation in this course will increase your ability to:

  • Formulate objectives and hypotheses to guide your research
  • Use appropriate instrumentation to obtain reliable data relating to the growing environment of plants and whole plant functions (click for list of instruments).
  • Understand the principles of selected instrumentation well enough to determine critically the precautions and conditions under which reliable data can be obtained.
  • Keep records of laboratory work that satisfy scholarly criteria and provide enough documentation for others to repeat the work if necessary
  • Select appropriate format for display of experimental data
  • Critically evaluate data and draw conclusions to guide further inquiry
  • Use information resources to find material relating to specific research interests
  • Communicate research ideas and results to others, orally and in writing.

Approach

There are three areas of activity:

  • classroom instruction
  • measurements of plant community attributes in the field
  • greenhouse measurements of wheat & soybeans under different environmental conditions

Each area will be introduced with a review of the significance of the subject, the underlying physiology and ecology and the available techniques. Students will then work on gathering their own data from the experiments (with guidance from the instructors and TA). This will occur both in the scheduled lab time and in arranged time as necessary. Follow-up sessions will be devoted to each of the areas of activity to review data and discuss its analysis, presentation and interpretation.

Lab Notebooks

Each student is required to keep a laboratory notebook describing the work done during the quarter. The notebook should contain:
1) the purpose of each experiment,
2) materials and methods,
3) the data or results of the experiment, and
4) conclusions or comments arising from the experiment.
Data should be entered in lab books as it is obtained. There should be enough detail to keep track of what was done without having to rely on memory and so that someone else could repeat the work without further instruction. Notebooks will be checked at least 3-times during the quarter to see if they are up to date. These checks will count for 30% of the final grade (10% per check).

suggestions for keeping a lab notebook - by Dr D. Bauer

Assignments

Two reports will be required. Both should be written in the format of a paper in Plant Physiology (approx 1500 words). These reports should include Introduction, Methods, Results and Discussion. Since you will be working in pairs, you can submit reports jointly. Reports are intended to complement your thesis research - so you can also consider how the method(s) would contribute to your study, a description of how the method might be used, and what information you would expect to obtain.

The first report should be one of the three field studies. It will be due 24 October extended to 31 October

The second report should be one of the greenhouse methods. It will be due 10 December.

Grading

Assignments will contribute to final grade as follows:
1
 Laboratory notebook (3 checks) 30% (10% each)
2
 Field report (due 24 October extended to 31 October) 20%
3
 'Participation' 25%
4
 Greenhouse report (due 10 December) 25%

Grades will be determined as follows:

93 - 100% = A

87 - 89% = B+

77 - 79% = C+

67 - 69% = D+

90 - 92% = A-

83 - 86% = B

73 - 76% = C

63 - 66% = D

80 - 82% = B-

70 - 72% = C-

0-62% = E

Other points

1) Disability. Any student who feels they may need specific accomodation based on the impact of a disability may contact either of the instructors privately to discuss their need. We rely on the Office for Disability Services for assistance in verifying the need for accommodations and developing accommodation strategies. If you have not previously contacted the Office for Disability Services, we encourage you to do so.

2) Attendance. Class attendance is voluntary and students can (and may be required to) work outside scheduled class hours, however, not all the curriculum can be found on the website or any other location and attendance at class is recommended. Instructors can not guarantee to make up material for students missing class.

3) Academic misconduct. Work in lab notebooks and the final report that is submitted for grading should be your own. The field report may be submitted jointly, however contributions to this project should be equal. Any use of material from other sources (class members, literature or world-wide-web) should be cited.

4) For ALL assignments, students have the opportunity to submit and revise their work until the due date. Assignments not turned in by the due date will loose 10% maximum credit per late day - NO EXCEPTIONS.

 

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