Emma Foster

Volunteering at Van Ness Elementary's annual fall festival was such a fun way to serve the community and spend time with a great group of kids. I ran a face painting booth, transforming kids into unicorns, skeletons, and Spidermen. Fall festivals celebrate the ecological phenomenon of seasonality, and the fall leaf decorations reminded me of plant biology we learned in lab. Leaf senescence occurs when the chlorophyll in a leaf dies, revealing xanthophylls and anthocyanin pigments that are red/orange/yellow.