We spent three days, helping a local cherry farmer design hand pollinator to save his cherry tree farm and increase the pollination of his cherry trees. Students had to use the materials provided to do this and there was a limit on the resources they could use. They also had to figure the cost of their hand pollinator and on the last day, we compared the amount of pollen that was left on the tree compared to the price of the hand pollinator and the cherry farmer purchased three of the pollinators!
Day one consisted of designing and constructing and testing. Day two consisted of redesigning based on the results from the day before and figuring out if we could reduce the cost of our hand pollinator. Day three consisted of testing and then comparing the results of all the groups. We focused on the amount of pollen that was left on the cherry tree and the total cost to see which hand pollinator was the best! We rated them using a 3-star system.
