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