A Problem at the Pond
Behind Maple Street Library is a pond with a small berry shrub on one side and a grassy shore on the other. The library club wants to make a model of how a bird could move seeds. A bird might eat a berry at the shrub and later leave a seed in a different place. The model will not use real food or animals.
Students make paper berries with small seed tokens inside. They build three bird-beak designs: a flat scoop, a curved cup, and a narrow fork. Each design is attached to the same paper bird body. For each design, students make eight trips, carrying one seed token from the shrub mat each time. They move one design from the shrub to the far-shore mat. They count how many seed tokens reach the far shore. They use the same distance, number of tokens, and number of trips for each design.
The class calls a trip successful when a seed token reaches the far shore on the bird model. The test can show how well a beak design carries tokens. It does not show whether real pond birds choose berries or whether a seed later grows.