posted for William Bogatyrenko
One thing that I thought Kat did well was include quotes from her article in her summary paragraph and her paragraph on the importance of this data to our present lives. This helped me better understand her article review and how the amount of seeds maple trees produce and the amount of syrup they produce are directly correlated. For example, the part where she said that “scientists reasoned that maple trees were saving energy to produce more carbohydrates,” helped me understand how the number of seeds and syrup produced by maple trees were directly correlated. The quote about how “‘when you collect sap to make syrup, what you are actually collecting is the stored carbohydrates of the tree” also helped me better understand scientists’ reasoning behind this new theory and how maple syrup and seed production are correlated. Another thing Kat did well was keep her summary short while still identifying key points of the article. I find it hard to find key points to include and figure out what information is unnecessary and does not have to be included in my summary. Because I have a challenge with keeping my summaries short, I appreciate how hard it is to do that. A third thing I thought Kat did well was write about a topic that could inform people about something new and interesting. I do not know much about maple trees, and the correlation between the amount of seeds produced to the amount of maple syrup produced was very interesting. It seems like a very simple idea that no one had thought of before, but scientists had just thought of this correlation. I would have thought that, after reading the article, they would have thought of the correlation between the amount of seeds and maple syrup produced long ago.
One thing that could be improved in this article review is Kat’s paragraph on the practicality of the new knowledge. Kat’s second paragraph was very short and not informative on the practicality at all. All she did was state simple knowledge about how farmers make more money when they produce more sap, and less money when their trees produce less sap. However, I am assuming that that is what she was trying to say. That sentence didn’t make very much sense to me. She said that farmers make more money when the trees produce more sap, and less money when the tree is “storing carbohydrates to produce sap.” This makes no sense at all because if the tree was storing carbohydrates, it would produce more sap, leading the farmer to make more money. I know this because earlier in her article review, she said that when trees store up carbohydrates by not producing many seeds, there is a higher sap yield. She could have said that farmers could use the knowledge of the scientists to figure out whether or not their trees would produce a lot of sap. If there were many maple seeds, the farmers would know that there was not going to be much syrup that year. If there weren’t many maple seeds in the fall, the farmers would know that there would be a lot of sap because the tree was storing up carbohydrates to produce more sap. The farmers could prepare for the winter accordingly based on the amount of seeds their maple trees produced. Another thing Kat could have improved on was her critique paragraph. She had very little criticism about the article. She just said that it was a little lengthy and went off topic talking about how “looking into how weather may affect the sap and seeds.” When I read the article, I thought that that information was informative because it talked about how farmers usually predict maple yields and if this was partially right of not. However, Kat could have included things such as the fact that the author did not include very much quantitative data from the study, or the researchers didn’t produce enough quantitative data.
However, in spite of what was wrong with this article review, I still thought that it was interesting. After I read the summary and the quote in the second paragraph, I understood the scientists reasoning and how it could help farmers right now. I also thought that it was a very interesting thought that the researchers had, and I thought that the correlation between the amount of seeds and syrup was very cool. I chose this article review because, as I previously stated, I do not know much about maple farming or maple trees, and wanted to read more about them. This article review has changed my perception of nature and how things are connected, because even the seemingly little things have have bigger effects later in time.
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