Wk 2 recap, looking at Wk3

We covered four topics in lab this week - Powers of Ten/Scale, Microscope Operation, Characteristics of Life, and Lab Safety.

Powers of Ten/Scale  

In science we study everything from the vast universe to subatomic particles.  If we only spoke about these things in meters, liters, and seconds we would have to write things like "the known universe is about 8,800,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 m wide" and "the diameter of a hydrogen nucleus is about 0.000000000000000175 m."  Keeping track of all those zeros alone is difficult, but doing math with them is tedious, unless you use scientific notation (powers of ten)!  We can say that the universe is 8.8 x 10^26 m wide, and the diameter of a hydrogen atom is 1.75 x 10^-15 m.   We also assign prefixes to some of the powers of ten, for example 10^3 m (1000 m) is called a kilometer (km). If you still feel you need more to understand the scale of these little things we study in biology I recommend this Khan Academy video.

Because I know you are all so excited to find out the answers to the Matching Scale quizzes, I will give you the answers. If you haven't tried a quiz, give it a shot: transition level here, scholar level here.

Transition level answers:
1-j, 2-o, 3-h, 4-a, 5-d, 6-e, 7-k, 8-g, 9-m, 10-b, 11-i, 12-c, 13-f, 14-n, 15-p, 16-l

Scholar level answers:
1-x, 2-q, 3-w, 4-j, 5-f, 6-bb, 7-c OR z, 8-z OR c, 9-i, 10-g, 11-d, 12-k, 13-r, 14-s, 15-a OR y, 16-y OR a, 17-e, 18-o, 19-v, 20-m, 21-h, 22-t, 23-l, 24-b, 25-n, 26-p, 27-aa, 28-cc, 29-u
*my apologies - there was a mistake in the Size and Meters columns for number 24 - it should read 10 Giga-meters and 10,000,000,000 m respectively.

Microscope Operation

We will be doing many microscope investigations/labs this year.  Please make sure you are familiar with the parts of the microscopes and are confident in using them.  You can go back and do the interactive tutorial again if needed.

Characteristics of Life

We got to observe some wriggling earth worms and look for evidence of life.  Some characteristics noted were movement/responding to environment, homeostasis, and using energy/metabolism (they are so transparent we could see food in their guts!).  Please see last week's readings and web content to learn about the characteristics of life if you haven't already.

Lab Safety

We discussed lab safety issues and I asked everyone to sign a safety contract.  I need to know you are committed to being safe in the lab in order for you to participate.  I will bring next week the safety contracts to sign for the few who forgot to yesterday. 

Looking Ahead to Week 3

Week 3's topics are Cell Theory and Prokaryotes vs Eukaryotes.  The Cell Theory has three main parts: 1) all living things are composed of one or more cells, 2) cells are the fundamental unit of life, and 3) cells rise from other pre-existing cells in a process called biogenesis.  All cells are either Prokaryotic or Eukaryotic.  Please read up on these topics from your chosen text.  If you are reading from the CK12 Biology Concepts (the scholar level CK12 text) this week's reading is short, so you may want to get a jump on next week's reading, which is longer.  After reading (and taking notes, which I highly recommend - if you don't know where to start with this you can try using Corenll Note system or I would be happy to talk to you one-on-one about other note systems for studying scientific writing and texts), watch the online videos.  Reviewing notes the next day, and then again in a week's time do much to solidify the concepts in your mind.

Week 3's lab will include slide preparation, slide staining, and making measurement estimates with the microscope.  We will also introduce the Science Vocabulary challenge...

Week	RSO	LOE	CK12 BC	CK12 LSC	Other Resources
3 Cell Theory, prokaryotes vs eukaryotes, wet mount slide preparation *Science Vocabulary Challenge introduced in class	Ch. 2 Cell Types	Ch 5 Intro Ch 5.1 Ch 5.2	1.5 2.2 (2.3)	2.1 2.2	Weird History of the CellTheory transition (but funny, scholars may enjoy it anyway) Cell Theory scholar Prokaryote vs Eukaryote scholar web video lecture or there's also this one Prokaryote vs Eukaryotetransition web video lecture
4 Components of a cell, cellular specialization, plant vs animal cells, stained slide *Project 1 "Cell Model"	Ch. 3 Inside Story	Ch 5.2 Ch 5.3 (Ch 5.4) Ch 5 Review	2.1 2.4 2.5 2.6 2.7 2.8 2.9 2.10 2.11	2.3 2.4 2.5 2.6	Cells Alive look closer at the differences between plant and animal cells Crash Course - Eukaryopolis scholar These Crash Course videos move fast and contain a lot. You might watch them before reading, but you will get the most out of them by watching after you have read.

RSO=Real Science Odyssey Bio 2, LOE=Life on Earth, CK12 BC= Biology Concepts, CK12 LSC=Life Science Concepts