Saturday, December 19, 2009

alex m. 12/19

This week we were making analogies to cells after we finished watching a video clip. The video stated that people live on streets and streets are in villiages/cities, cities are in countries, countries are in continents, continents are in the earth, earth is in our solar system, our solar system is in our galaxy and our galaxy is in our universe. This all is telling something. These are all layers into creating our universe. This related to our cells and how they are just made up of layers. By knowing this information we can now make analogies and compare everyday things like a school and a hotel building to a cell. Wedo this by taking a specific part like the foundation of a building and calling it the cell wall or membrane since they both surve the same purpose.

Saturday, December 5, 2009

awesome alex!

This week was all about Photosynthesis and Fermination. First photosynthesis is just like a huge cirlce along with respiration. From the chloroplast to the mitocondeia produces energy (sunlight and carbohydratrates), water (H2O), oxygen

(O2), and carbon dioxide (CO2). From the mitocondria to the chloplast produces energy, H2O, O2, and CO2. From this you can see the cycle that is being shown. Along with respirationa dn photosynthesis, if animals and plants are both part of the respiration cycle if all animals dyed than something would get messed up. Animals inhale oxygen from the plants and then exhale carbon dioxide. Then the plants give off oxygen so WE can breath and vise versa(only with carbin dioxide). Since this is a cycle niether species would be able to get back that oxygen or carbon dioxide to keep the cycle continuous. Fermination is respiration without oxygen. The reactants of fermination are glucose which are sugar, and the products are carbin dioxide, alcohol, energy and for animals lactic acid. We also did a fermination experiment.

First to see if when we put reactants to fermination, yeast and sugar, and water, into the test tube we would get the smell of alcohol and carbin dioxide would be "ehaled". To tell if there was carbin dioxide being exhaled we put a balloon over the top of the test tube to see. Our results were positive to our first prediction!

Lastly we learned about DNA. DNA is just your parents dna mixed together since no to people have the same DNA except for twins. As we learned DNA is not a cell beacuse it is made up of cells. I think that DNA is formed into a long stringy form because DNA is made up of a bunch of cells, and once they all come together they form this type of formation. :)


Saturday, November 21, 2009

alex.m 11/21

This week we laerned a lot about respiration. First of all when we repirate we inhale oxygen(o2) and carbohydrates(C6H12O6). When we exhale we breath out comes carbon dioxide(CO2) and water(H2O). What we also learned is that both sides of the equation need to have equal amounts of atoms. Respirations happens all through your cells and lungs. This way all of the cells can carry the oxygen through the rest of your body. Red blood cells drop off nutrients and oxygen to the other cells so they can all respirtate. That we figured out since our lungs and cells pass the oxygen through the other cells, there is not as much oxygen gets exhaled that we inhale. The mitochandria turns the oxygen into carbon dioxide(CO2) when we exhale. After we finished our respiration(for now!) we started to discuss photosynthasis. Plants take in carbon and release oxygen, so we can inhale oxygen and they can can "inhale" carbon when we exhale.

Friday, November 6, 2009

homework of the two day break

This week we started to learn about paramecium cells. A paramecium cell is categorized as an animal cell in class but is really called a protozoa which means not a plant or an animal cell. Also the paramecium cell moves by the unicellular microbe using celia. These are hairlike structures that surround the organism and pulse rhythmically pushing it forward or in any direction. A paramecium is a cell that lives in stagnate water since it is a calm environment unlike running water which has a rough environment.

homework of the three day break

This week we started to learn about paramecium cells. A paramecium cell is categorized as an animal cell in class but is really called a protozoa which means not a plant or an animal cell. Also the paramecium cell moves by the unicellular microbe using celia. These are hairlike structures that surround the organism and pulse rhythmically pushing it forward or in any direction. A paramecium is a cell that lives in stagnate water since it is a calm environment unlike running water which has a rough environment. http://cmapspublic2.ihmc.us/rid=1228170101921_190956518_12114/paramecium.gif

Saturday, October 31, 2009

homework of halloween weekend!!

This week on science we learned about different cells, like in your body, plants and animals. First was the plant cell. Plant cells have parts which help the plant do functions. For example the nucleous which helps controls the plant cells' actions. Leaning about the animal and body cells was also very interesting. Inside our cheeks, have cells. These cells re called cheek cells, while as a liver would have liver cells. Other parts if our body are made up of other cels as said before. Below are some photos of the labeled plant and animal cells. That was pretty much what we talked about for this week!

cell copy.jpg


Saturday, October 24, 2009

homework 10/23/09

This week in science we learned all about different bacteria, arrangements and reviwed our results of the grams test!

Bacteria
  1. Bacillus - a rod shaped bacteria - a tic- tac (real life similarity)
  2. Cocci - a circle shaped bacteria - a ball (real life similarity)
  3. Spirillum - a spiral or stringy shaped bacteria - some string (real life similarity)

Arrangements

  1. Diplo - a pair ~ diplococcus
  2. Strepto - a chain ~ streptospirilum
  3. Tetra - a group of four ~ tetracoccus
  4. Staphylo - a clump ~ straphylococcus

For the grams test our main question was : What type of bacteria is this?

Once we were finished with our grams test, the results turned the color of red. According to our other research if the color is reddish than its gram negative which means taking up more counterstain. This makes the gram negative bacterias turn red or pink since it cannot contain the light violet color. On the other hand gram positive would turn a drak blue or a violet beacuse of its high amount of pepidoglycan in the cell wall. Lastly, when we were using the strioscope our group obesrved that the bacteria could possibly be a bacillus bacteria, but we will find out more information on Monday.

Saturday, October 17, 2009

homework of 10/16

this week in science i learned about taking the procedure of the chicken from the community department of health project that we have been working on. Here it is:
  1. open the chicken
  2. wipe steral swab over the inside of the chicken
  3. rub the swab on half of the petri dish
  4. throw away the dirty swab and get a new one
  5. rub new swab over the outside of the chicken and rub it on the other half of the perti dish onto the agar, throw the swab away
  6. put the closed petri dish into the incubator each day come in and check on the petri dish at exactally 12'o clock to record our results of that day (including amount of colonies appear)

Sunday, October 11, 2009

homework 10/9

This week in science we learned about our group bacteria finding in the petri dishes. To figure out how much bacteria there was in the petri dishes, we put some agar, or bacteria food, in the petri dishes. In my experiment we saw that inside of the toilet that there was a lot of bacteria along with the paper towel despencer handle. Also we started to learn about the microscopes and how they are going to help us with our Community Health Department project. Cant wiat until we start learning more about the microscopes and figure out more about or bathroom experiment.

Monday, October 5, 2009

alex's homework blog of the week 10-2

This week in science we had touched on other different topics like Komo News, How Big, and Surface Testing of different bathroom objects.

Komo News
Summary: This article was about a 12 year old boy who has come up with an invention to save solar cells.
Question 1: Why did Mr. Finley ask us to read this article?
Mr. Finley had asked us to read this article for many important reasons. He might want us as students to start up our own environmentally friendly project as well as William Yuan. Also Mr. Finley might want us to start reading this since we might start learning about saving solar cells, sun, and energy in class. Lastly, Mr. Finley might want to prove something to us. Even though William Yuan is a very smart, but we as many other 12 year olds can do the same thing he is. We are all very smart kids and we are all just people, it’s not like Yuan has a special power that makes him better than the rest of us. We are all just young people who can do what they want to do if they try and never give up.

How Big
Summary
: We had discussed our online simulation and also learned about different science words to tell if something would be either, macroscopic, microscopic, or sub-microscopic underneath looking through a telescope.
Question 2: How do you think this online simulation will help you?
This simulation will help me by now knowing and understanding that bacteria is actually very large and a large cell so bacteria can spread more since its so big and it can effect more people. Also this has allowed me to visualize bacteria on objects in different size proportions to see how much bacteria was on the item.
Question 3: Name two objects that go in each category that were used on the online simulation. (macroscopic, microscopic, and sub-microscopic)
In the macroscopic category the finger and pin would be categorized there. In the microscopic the two objects would be yeast and the red blood cells. And lastly, the objects in the sub-microscopic category would be Rhino virus and Ebola virus.
Question 4: What do the terms, macroscopic, microscopic, and sub-microscopic mean?
Macroscopic- Big
Microscopic- Small
Sub-Microscopic- Really Small

Surface Testing
Summary: We tested different objects and are going to see how much bacteria they hold, but the objects are from our school bathrooms.
Question 5: Which objects in the bath room are more contaminated?
Definitely the toilet seats/flushers, the door handles/locks of stalls, sink knobs, and paper towel dispenser handles since they are all touched by different people who all have germs.
Question 6: What would be your hypothesis?
My hypothesis would be to test the one sample of the object that I think is germy and one that I think is not so dirty. Then we would figure out which object really has more bacteria. Afterward we could also compare our new data with our other findings with the other students in the class.
Question 7: How can you tell the amounts of bacteria on the object that is being tested?
You can figure out if there is bacteria or not within and object by using a petri dish. On this petri dish we would have to put this special kind of food that is called agar. This is food for the bacteria so when the testing of the object has bacteria the food is being eaten away so we can notice and gather our new observations.

Sunday, September 27, 2009

alex.m homewrk 9/25

This week in science we learned many new things. In class there were different questions asked, questions that were harder to answer and we started to pick at a new topic. Then at the end of the week we had a quiz and that wrapped up our week.
Question 1:“What are some characteristics of life?”
Well some characteristics of life include, able to reproduce, growing, breathing, respirate, display heredity, and needs energy. Also going along side with this question is that we did an experiment to test out our thinking’s for living and non-living this. We tested objects such as apples, seeds, and exo-skeleton, and a flame. Our tables had tot determine which were living or non-living. Sometimes our thinking was different from other students in the class, so we had to check out the object a little more to prove our point. Figuring out which objects were living or non-living was quite difficult until we added another category which helped us organize things a little better. I didn’t realize how difficult it was to notice if something was living or non-living until I did this experiment with the class, and learned that you can never tell if something is living or not by just looking at it.
Question 2: “Why is it so hard for all of us to come to a conclusion if something is living or not living?”
We all have a very difficult time putting these items into different categories because we all interpret things differently and all have our own ideas and opinions about things. This makes it much more difficult since we all can’t come to one conclusion since we all have different ways of thinking. Another conclusion that I can make is that our class is very ambiguous, when, discussing things like what we were talking about in class and shows that we are all very opened minded.
Question 3: “How does a hypothesis differ from a prediction?”
During this week we touched a strong point on the topics hypothesis and prediction. Hypotheses show more information and are based on an observation. They are also testable, very general as in not specific and can also be incorrect. Predictions on the other hand need a hypothesis and are based on a hypothesis, just like a hypothesis depends on a prediction. This shows that they rely on each other, but have different things bout them which makes them different from each other. Predictions also have a test to back them up, very specific, and always are correct. Both hypothesis and prediction re very different from each other, very opposite, but will always have to use during an experiment.
Lastly we started to look at the Community Heath Department concern. This was a list of schools that had a huge number of students out per time and needed to figure out what was going around and how they can prevent that. We are still working on it and will hopefully get some more reports from Mr. Seagan soon.

Saturday, September 19, 2009

homework--9/18

this week i learned about different sicknesses like diareahal disease and malaria. These sicknesses are mainly caused by the spreading of germs or feces. You can catch the disease, malaria, by getting bitten by mosquito that has that disease so now the sickness is running all over your body. Other than learning about sicknesses we learned about independant and dependant variables. A dependant variable is a varible that changes according to how your expirement turns out and an independant variable is a variable that you change durin your experiment. This week we learned many more things and I cant wait to learn more next week!!