DNA from World's Oldest Human? WHAT?

Very exciting stuff! DNA was just found and sequenced from the world's oldest human! The DNA was taken from the nucleus of cells in the remains of a human leg bone.  Click on the link to read more from BBC News.  http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-25193442

ATTTACK OF THE 80FT DNA

Today we spent the day coloring and cutting to create the worlds largest DNA sequence.  Look at all of those spiffy nucleotides all paired together.  Adenine and Thymine, Guanine and Cytosine together forever!  

The Wonderful World of Genetics...and strawberries

Coming back from our glorious Thanksgiving holiday we transitioned from learning about cells to genetics! Our first day on the job we performed a simple experiment to extract (pull out) DNA from strawberries.  Our goal was to determine if strawberries are alive! We know that all living things are made of cells, so if we are able to extract DNA then they are in fact living.  This is so simple you can do it at home with a few ingredients from around the house. Try some other fruits and veggies! Here's a look at the fun we had.

Mushed strawberry with soapy water and meat tenderizer! YUM

Take a look at our notebook and scientific observations

Is that spit? Is it snot? NO! Its strawberry DNA!

Extra Credit Review Packet

Just in case you accidentally wipe your mouth with their cell review packet instead of a napkin during Thanksgiving dinner (No I have never done anything like that before...... maybe that one time...). Here is the complete packet.  Remember your test on December 2 when we get back!

The Cell Museum

Students displayed their work yesterday in our second annual cell museum.  Here are some pictures of their finished work.  It was overall very impressive, getting rave reviews from teachers, administrators and other students from around campus who came to take a look.  Not included are our  multimedia projects which showed some beautiful student faces that should remain anonymous.  Enjoy a happy Thanksgiving break.  Be ready for our cell unit exam when we come back December 2!

Animal Cell Built From: Foam, Paint and Play Doh

Play Doh Animal Cell

Two Very Impressive Cell Cycle Projects

Student Taking In The Beauty That Is The Prokaryotic Bacteria Cell

More Students Pondering The Beauty Of Bacteria

Recording Information From A Model Of Photosynthesis

Watching Some Multimedia Projects

The Giant Plant Cell!

Some More Plant cell Models

Hard at Work

Sorry for the delay in posts but we have been hard at work cramming our minds with all there is to know about cells! Prokaryotic cells, Eukaryotic cells, organelles, mitochondria, chloroplasts, photosynthesis, cellular respiration, mitosis, binary fission... you get the idea.  Right now the students and I are putting together a museum to house all of the amazing artifacts they have created about these topics.  Here are some pictures of their work under construction.  The finished museum pics will follow shortly.  

Fun with Cells and Play Doh

Tutoring can be fun.  Today my trusty friends and I made models of the phases of the cell cycle out of Play Doh.  Check out our movie and study the phases at the same time.  It's a no brain-er

The Science of Bread: Feeding the Yeast

Getting ready to feed some yeast and observe cellular respiration

Today we got to do a really neat experiment showing the process of cellular respiration.  The students mixed sugar and yeast in a flask with warm water and covered with a balloon.  Cellular respiration uses oxygen and glucose taken into the mitochondria and converts it into energy, water and carbon dioxide.  

The carbon dioxide gas, a product of cellular respiration
is causing the balloon to expand

The yeast, even though they don't look alive, are actually simple unicellular organisms! In the picture above we can see the finished product.  Look at all of that carbon dioxide gas developing.  

Go ahead and try this at home (with supervision of course)!

here are a list of materials:

1 cup of warm water

2 tablespoons of dry active yeast

3 sugar cubes or 2 tablespoons of sugar

1 balloon

1 flask (you can use a small water bottle)

You can even take your yeast mixture and make bread out of it.  

• 3/4 cup warm water
• 1 package active dry yeast
• 1 tsp salt
• 1-1/2 tbsp sugar
• 1 tbsp vegetable shortening
• 1/2 cup milk
• 3 cups all-purpose flour, approximately

Just combine flour salt milk and shortening with your yeast mixture until it becomes a dough.  Here is the rest of the recipe from about.com.  

1. Turn dough out onto floured board and knead, adding small spoonfuls of flour as needed, until the dough is soft and smooth, not sticky to the touch.
   
2. Put dough in buttered bowl, turn dough over so that the top of dough is greased. Cover and let rise in warm spot for 1 hour.
   
3. Punch down dough. Turn out onto floured board and knead.
   
4. Preheat oven at 375 degrees F.
   
5. Form dough into loaf and set in buttered bread pan. Cover and let rise for about 30 minutes.
   
6. Score dough by cutting three slashes across the top with a sharp knife. Put in oven and bake for about 45 minutes or until golden brown.

Photosynthetic Beat

Here is an awesome rap my eighth period put together about the ingredients of photosynthesis and its products.  Pretty catchy! Take a listen.

Cell City Projects

Here are some images of the cell cities that were created by students this week.  Their task was to create a city where each city component was analogous to a cell organelle.  Some students let their creativity run wild and didn't use the city model at all but developed their own theme!  Take a look at their hard work.  

Some students taking part in a cell city gallery walk

Golgi Body Discovery Leads 3 to Win Nobel Prize

Amazing news today that 3 scientists have discovered how exactly cells ship material from one organelle to another.  These scientists have earned the Nobel Prize for medicine or physiology for their discovery.  Pretty fascinating considering we were just packaging and shipping ourselves with the Golgi Body in a game of Nucleus Says! Maybe one day we could have some Nobel Prize winners of our own.

Click the link below to read more

Discovery of cell "shipping"

Cell Cities Under Construction

Students were tasked this week with the challenge of creating their own cities! The idea of the project is create an analogy between a city building with a specific job and an organelle inside a cell.  Students are currently hard at work creating their city plans.  Here are a few pictures of what they are up to with final pictures of their projects soon to come.

Students using their beautifully color coded cell notes to plan their cell city

A student admiring a cell city example project  from last year

Singing About Cells!

This is my personal favorite cell song.  It really helps me remember all of the cell organelles and their functions.  Give it a listen!

Plant Cells, Up Close and Personcell ;)

 Take a look at some onion cells as seen by the students through the microscope today.  What do you notice about them?

All about rainbows podcast!

Listen to this podcast from RadioLab all about where color/light comes from and how our eyes interpret it! Take a listen

Yummy Gummy Bear Lab

Here are some images of our gummy bear lab that we did this past wednesday.  We are able to see evidence of reflection, absorption and transmission, 3 properties of light we are focusing on this unit.  

 Yummy lab equipment!!

The red laser shines through the red gummy bears demonstrating transmission.  Some of the red laser light is also reflecting or bouncing off of the gummies causing them to glow!

The red laser seems to stop right when it hits the green gummy bears demonstrating absorption; light being sucked in!

Tutoring Hours

Tutoring this Wednesday 9/11/13 3:35 - 4:30 in preparation for Friday's quiz and notebook check!

Refraction in Action

 Today was a stellar lab day all about the property of light- refraction. Look at some of the cool activities we did demonstrating the bending of light!

Observing refraction: white light bending into all of the colors of the rainbow (Roy G. Biv)

Rainbows coming off of a flashlight and prism

Look at light bending as the water falls out of the hole in our container

Observing refraction: light from the laser is bent as the water falls from the container hitting a student's finger

Observing refraction: the light bends as it enters the water making the straws appear bent or broken

Laser Maze!

A miss.......

A direct hit!

Great teamwork and collaboration was shown last week with our Laser Maze activity.  We mastered the protractor and used what we learned about reflection, angle of incidence and the angle of reflection to bounce a laser between two mirrors and hit a target.  A job well done!

End of Light Unit Coming Quickly!

Reminder: There will be an end of unit test and your notebooks will be collected this friday!

Since this week is all about properties of light, in particular reflection and refraction, I found this BBC article particularly fascinating.

The article is all about a skyscraper in England called the "walkie talkie" building.  This building's windows are at the perfect angle to reflect sunlight in a concentrated beam right at the street below.  Find out what happened by clicking the link below!

A skyscraper that melted a car with reflection!

Look at some of the amazing work created this week!

Here are our posters advertising our movies on the different wavelengths of the Electro Magnetic Spectrum.  Some pretty amazing collaboration took place.  Now I couldn't put all of the posters up here for you to view, here is just a sample of the many amazing works of science I had to choose from.  

Here is the reading on the Electromagnetic Spectrum we will be working on Tuesday.  This is a good review of what you all read with the substitute on Friday.  Remember if you did not complete the textbook questions they need to be completed by the first notebook check.