Kickball Outfield Energy Routes

Beyond the Kickball Boundary

Beyond a school’s kickball outfield, a strip of tall grass separates the playing area from a fence. A nature club studies this strip without entering it during games. With permission, an adult places a wildlife camera beside the fence. The club watches recordings collected over several days. Students record feeding events when the food and the animal eating it are clear. They see voles eating grass, rabbits eating grass, and a red-tailed hawk eating voles or rabbits. The graph summarizes these observations. Its labels name the eater first and the food second. For example, “Vole: grass” means a vole was seen eating grass.

To help interpret the recordings, the club reads about plants and animals. Green plants use energy from sunlight to make food. Some of this food is used as the plants grow, and some remains stored in plant parts. Water and minerals help plants grow, but they are not the energy source plants use to make food. Animals get usable energy from food they eat. An animal may eat plant parts or eat another animal. Animals use food energy for movement, growth, and keeping their bodies working. Food can store energy until an organism uses it, including during times when sunlight is not reaching the field.

The students want to build models using boxes and arrows. Each box will name the sun, a plant, an animal, or an activity. An arrow should show the direction of an energy transfer, not the direction an animal walks. A model may branch when the observations support more than one feeding route. The students also discuss what their records leave out. A feeding event might involve a small bite or a much larger meal. The camera did not measure the energy in either meal. The records describe observed feeding connections; they do not measure how much energy moved along a connection.