HELEN: I’ve brought my notes on our Biology Field Trip to Rocky Bay, Colin, so we can work on our report on the research we did together.
COLIN: OK. I’ve got mine too. Let’s look at the aims of the trip first.
HELEN: Right. What did you have?
COLIN: I just put something about getting experience of the different sorts of procedures used on a field trip. But we need something about what causes different organisms to choose particular habitats.
HELEN: I agree. And something about finding out how to protect organisms in danger of dying out?
COLIN: In our aims? But we weren’t really looking at that.
HELEN: I suppose not. OK, now there’s the list of equipment we all had to bring on the field trip. What did they tell us to bring a ruler for?
COLIN: It was something about measuring the slope of the shore, but of course we didn’t need it because we were measuring wind direction, and we’d brought the compass for that …
HELEN: But not the piece of string to hold up in the air! Didn’t Mr Blake make a fuss about us leaving that behind.
COLIN: Yeah. He does go on. Anyway it was easy to get one from another of the students.
HELEN: Now, the next section’s the procedure. I sent you the draft of that.
COLIN: Yeah. It was clear, but I don’t think we need all these details of what time we left and what time we got back and how we divided up the different research tasks.
HELEN: OK. I’ll look at that again.
COLIN: Then we have to describe our method of investigation in detail. So let’s begin with how we measured wave speed. I was surprised how straightforward that was.
HELEN: I’d expected us to have some sort of high-tech device, not just stand there and count the number of waves per minute. Not very precise, but I suppose it was good enough. But the way we measured the amount of salt was interesting.
COLIN: In the water from the rock pools?
HELEN: Yeah, oh, I wanted to check the chemicals we used in the lab when we analysed those samples – was it potassium chromate and silver nitrate?
COLIN: That’s right.
HELEN: OK. And we need the map of the seashore. You just left that to me. And I had to do in while the tide was low, well that was OK, but the place I started it from was down on the beach, then I realised I should have gone up higher to get better visibility, so I had to start all over again. But at least I’d go the squared paper or I’d have had problems drawing it all to scale.
COLIN: Yes. It looks good. We could get a map of the region off the internet and see if we need to make any changes.
HELEN: I had a look but I couldn’t find anything. But you took some pictures, didn’t you?
COLIN: Yeah. I’ll email you them if you want.
HELEN: OK. I’ll make my amendments using those, then I can scan it into our report. Great.
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