How to be like Rocky!

We are wrapping up this section on organic compounds and I feel that we have FINALLY got to a point where I am comfortable moving on.  This whole chapter on the chemistry of life is CRUCIAL to understanding the rest of this year.  If you recall in the "Crash Course" Hank Green stated that in order to understand Biology you HAVE to have at least a general knowledge of the chemistry behind it.  We did not have daily questions the last two days - Tuesday we had an open notes quiz and Wednesday we started into a an activity (which I will include in its own post)  Today we DID have a set of three daily questions that are sample questions from the Keystone exam.  Here they were

Letters A and B are best represented by which row in the chart?

Row	Metabolic Activity A	B
1	Respiration	Oxygen molecules
2	Reproduction	Hormone Molecules
3	Excretion	Simple Sugar Molecules
4	Digestion	Amino Acid Molecules

Many of you right away decided that you had no idea what this was even asking.  After taking a step back and seeing that all that is really required here was knowing what proteins are made up of, many of you were able to quickly see that the answer was #4 - The process would be digestion and the Smaller molecules would be amino acids.

Which statement concerning simple sugars and amino acids is correct?

1.  They are both wastes resulting from protein synthesis

2. They are both building blocks of starch

3.  They are both needed for the synthesis of larger molecules

4.  They are both stored as fat molecules in the liver.

 When I had you all give me a number, many gave the number two.  Number two is incorrect because while simple sugars are the building blocks of starch, amino acids are not.  Amino acids recall are the building blocks of proteins.   So #3 is the most accurate answer in saying that they are both  needed for the synthesis (creation of) larger molecules.

Which row would best complete the lettered blanks in the two sentences below?

    Organic Compounds such as proteins and starches are too _A_ to diffuse into cells.  Proteins are digested into _B_ and starches are digested into _C_.

row	A	B	C
1	Large	Simple Sugars	Amino Acids
2	Small	Simple sugars	Amino acids
3	Large	Amino acids	Simple sugars
4	Small	Amino acids	Simple sugars

Row 3 most accurately fills in the blanks.  Remember, all the organic compounds we have been talking about are very large (MACROmolecules) so right away you should have narrowed it to either number 1 or 3, then it was a matter of remembering what the subunits of proteins and starches are.  Again - as with the other questions from today - Proteins are made up of amino acids, starches are made up of simple sugars.

After going through these - we then looked at two clips from Rocky and analyzed what was correct and incorrect about his training regime based on our understanding of organic compounds and their functions.  We will continue with this activity tomorrow. See another post with more details on this assignment!