Although I am familiar with the Scientific method, I don't believe I have used the Design Challenge. These two exercises seem to be great ways to get involved with the material. Sometimes just learning this content is not enough and exercises like these can be very beneficial to the students. I am excited to explore more concepts using this exercise.

By creating the shade structure and mirror contraption, the amount of sunlight that the tomato plants can be controlled. This way there will be three levels of sunlight and allowing for more accurate results in the experiment. Based on the hypothesis, I think the plants in the shade structure will be shorter than the ones in the sun, however, the tomatoes in the mirror structure may get too much sunlight and cause the plants to burn.

A falsifying hypothesis is a hypothesis that can be proved false with an observation or experiment. Most hypotheses are falsified and are often critical to the scientific method. This is important to the scientific method to answer your original question. Without a falsifying hypothesis, the hypothesis could not be proved incorrect and there would be no point to the experiment.

I interpret a mental model as picturing something in your mind that is or organizes material that will help further your understanding of a concept. This could be picturing the way atoms are bonded together or a model of similarities and differences between two processes. Although a mental model can be helpful to some students, sometimes a physical picture or model is more helpful to the teacher and student when learning a new concept.

I have also found this reviewing strategy to be very beneficial in many different college classes. Although I have found it difficult to stay on top of and tedious. I am definitely planning to use this technique to learn the content of this course.

I have always found engaging with fellow students to be helpful in learning new topics together. I am hoping that the time planned in the lecture for small group discussion will benefit most, if not all, students.

Am I assuming correctly that we will discuss both plant and animal cells, individually, as well?