characteristics of life lab

wednesday and thursday of this week we took some time to look at different characteristics of life.  I had you all swab different areas and plate them on agar dishes or transfer them to a liquid medium to see if we could see bacterial growth and reproduction.  We also looked at our little tube of organisms and tested to see if they could metabolize sugar and water.  We found that the lil buggers were indeed able to metabolize it and in the mean time were able to collect some of their waste in baloons!!!

Thursday i also gave you a chance to look under the microscopes at a human cheek cell (one of your own peers in fact!), some bacteria, kidney tissue and heart tissue.  I like this activity as a nice intro to this class so that you understand how small of a scale we will be looking at this year.

E.coli

cheek cells (3)

Heart Cells

Kidney Cells

 I also gave you a chance to look a little more at the sheep brain. Again, the reason I am letting you see this is to show you what we are learning on a LARGE scale (the organ scale) but that everything that actually happens is going on at the cellular level!!

Characteristics of life wrap up and lab preview

Tuesday August 27^th

Which characteristic is shared by all prokaryotes and eukaryotes?

A. use of cellular respiration for energy release (Incorrect:  all organisms DO take in and release energy, but not all use cellular respiration)

B. use of organelles to control cell processes (Incorrect:  while all organisms do have cells, not all use organelles)

C. ability to store hereditary information Correct!!  ALL living organisms contain DNA which is the molecule that stores hereditary information.

D. ability to move in response to environmental stimuli Incorrect, while all organisms respond to environmental stimuli, NOT all organisms MOVE!!

Every car has a VIN number that identifies it, every living organism has a molecule called DNA that identifies it.  What is one difference between the FUNCTION of a VIN number and our molecule of heredity??

While a VIN and DNA both identify a car/ living organism, only DNA can actually provide the INSTRUCTIONS for MAKING an organism.  We could not build a car with just the VIN number, we CAN determine the characteristics and "build" a living organism by knowing it's DNA.
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Today I had you finish the Car analogy determining which characteristics of life a car has and those that it does not.  After that, to wrap up our discussion on characteristics of life I had you working in the books to skim through this section.  Finally, you began to set up your first lab!!!  Many of you swabbed different areas and transferred that to either agar plates or to nutrient broth to see if we could both growth and reproduction tomorrow in bacteria.  A couple classes also had the opportunity to set up slides of their cheek cells to look at tomorrow.  We will work through a couple labs/demonstrations over the next two days!!

Characteristics of life final notes

 Monday August 26^th

*A jackrabbit has large ears containing blood vessels that help it maintain a constant body temperature by adjusting heat exchange with the surrounding environment.  Which characteristic of life is BEST described by this example?

homeostasis

*Which characteristic do ALL prokaryotic and eukaryotic organisms share?

A.  Need for a source of energy

B.  Ability to make their own food

C.  Ability to reproduce asexually

D.  Need for oxygen for respiration

E.  Have feelings

Characteristics of life day 2

Friday August 23rd:  DQ’s

*  In order to be considered alive – all living organisms must contain at least one Cell.

*All living organisms can be classified as prokaryotic or Eukaryotic.  These names tell you the type of Cell that make them up.  Of these two types, bacteria are considered Prokaryotic.

*Whether it is prokaryotic or eukaryotic ALL cells contain a molecule of heredity known as  DNA

Today we continued through a couple more characteristics of life in preparation for next weeks activities.  Here is what we made it through so far and some of the examples!!

 
 
 
 
With metabolism I talked a little about morning breath, stinky feet and farts.... here is a little more info on that for ya!!

Welcome Back!!!!!!!

We made it through our first two days!!!  Wednesday was mostly a getting to know you session and I had you watch the welcome back video.

This explains most of my expectations of you but also outlines what you can expect of ME!!!  This is going to be a tough year full of MANY challenges, but you WILL be successful if you give me all you've got!!!

I also referred to last years highlight film that I showed you all the last day of school in May.If you follow this link you can watch it again.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/mn64n36btfkkmjf/2012-2013%20Highlight%20film%20-%20Medium.m4v

Hopefully we will be able to do ALL of this and MORE!!!  This summer I had the opportunity to do research at Carnegie Mellon University and develop ways to incorporate that research into the classroom.  Here are some of the things i hope to do with you guys in the second semester.

 Today we had our first set of daily questions and started into our first set of notes.

Daily Questions (DQ’s)

Thursday August 22^nd

How many times can you use a hall pass in a nine-week period and WHEN during class can you use them?

3 times, First or Last 5 minutes of class.  It is IMPERATIVE that you are in class.  We have a lot to get through and missing ANY part of it will hinder your success.  I promised to do everything in my power to help you succeed..... this is one of them!!!!

Biology is the study of what?

 Life:  the term "bio" means "life" the term "ology" means the study of.  

Tell me one characteristic that you think defines “life” (What does it mean to be alive????)

At this point I had you work with partners to brainstorm things that you think are characteristic of ALL living things.  I showed you the following slide to guide your thoughts.

  Some of the answers I got from you were SPOT ON, others, we will see, are EXAMPLES of a characteristic but not necessarily a characteristic of ALL living things!!

We will answer this question throughout the next couple days with some notes and labs!  This is what we got through today.

At this point I had you guys look at a sheep brain to show you how we can "SEE" an organism (I can see you, you can see me) and we can "See" an organ (we were looking at a brain in fact)

To understand how small cells actually are we went to the following website.  This is a  great animation to put cell size into perspective.  Check it out!!!

http://learn.genetics.utah.edu/content/begin/cells/scale/ 

Great Job today!!  I'm looking forward to a great year.