Hey there! You probably saw the title of this post and asked yourself, why P.A.N.T.S? What do pants even have to do with matter cycles anyway? Good question! For this past unit in Scimatix, we’ve been studying Matter Cycles and their positive and negative effects and how they contribute to the world. The four main cycles we looked at were Carbon, Hydro, Nitrogen and the one I focused on, Phosphorus Cycle. Once again, I got to work with the awesome and trusty Fraser to brainstorm and create a solution to one of our cycle’s problems.

As usual, each project we do has a purpose in learning. We call these curricular competencies. Basically, they’re the main points and skills we are learning. In this case, let’s begin with questioning and predicting. Fraser and I brainstormed our knowledge of what we already knew and didn’t know about our cycle. The main points you need to know is that phosphorus helps nurture plants and helps them grow healthier and stronger. It’s naturally found in the ground and is preserved in rocks. From there, the two of us researched and took note of the main negative side effect to the cycle and how it was caused. It so happens that humans and their use of fertilizer are the main problem as fertilizer contains extra phosphorus which gets soaked into the ground. From there, the minerals get washed into bodies of water such as oceans and cause something called algalbloom.

After carefully analyzing the situation, my partner and I evaluated the situation and drew up a diagram with our solution. We knew what the problem was but also knew that plants used phosphorus to grow. Keeping that in mind, we created our solution that we called P.A.N.T.S. It stands for Phosphorus Abundant Nutrients Terminal System. It uses plants as a sponge o soak up excess phosphorus before it reaches the oceans. At the beginning of the post is an animation Fraser drew up and I wrote a short essay to explain the problem and our solution.

Finally, to  present and communicate our solution, the two of us made a short slide show explaining our system. This was presented to the class during school along with many other presentation pitches on other solutions for different matter cycles.

Thanks for reading!