Pig Dissection

The purpose of this lab was to identify the different systems and to see how they all work together.  It helped us learn more in depth about the different systems, and we could see their relations in a real organism, not just in a diagram. We could see more clearly how they all worked together and their importance to each other. For example, we saw the heart was placed between the lungs and the main arteries and veins, showing the relationship that the circulatory and respiratory systems support each other. The heart needs oxygen from the lungs so it can pump oxygenated blood to the whole body.The anatomy and physiology of the pig is very similar to humans since they both are mammals. My favorite part of the dissection was making the cuts, which were exciting. It slowly revealed all the inside organs, until eventually almost the entire anatomy was revealed. I think that this dissection was a valuable experience because it helped me to pull together all the vodcasts and understand how everything was related. I was not able to understand it through separate diagrams.

endocrine system 

external anatomy 

respiratory 

 

digestive system

urinary and reproductive system 

circulatory system pt 1

circulatory system pt 2

20 Time Final post

Ella's and my 20 time project was to follow the model of the fun theory to try and make everyday activities more fun to improve peoples' health and happiness. Here is a summary of our experience.  For a month we brainstormed different ways to make activities more fun. We only started conducting experiments in early April, since our experiments had a lot of variables, or the ones we thought of were too complex. Our first experiment aimed to make our school cleaner by adding basketball hoops over trashcans  to making throwing trash away more fun. We found that after adding the hoop there was a spike in the amount of trash people threw away. Once we took it away, the number dropped.

Amount of trash people threw away in the team room

We also tried to make homework more fun by giving people small tests with "Fun pens" (sparkly gel pens). The people who used the fun pens said it was more fun than a regular pen and they would take the quiz again. One person who used a regular pen said she would take it again if she had a fun pen. There are still a lot of ways that we can make life more fun, but it is difficult to be creative.

Our TED talk went well overall, although it could have been better. I was not happy with my stage presence and projection, since I know that I can utilize the stage better. We memorized certain parts and were able to replicate it. However, I forgot to  state our original thesis that tied in all the concepts, but Ella said it later. I think we meet all the parts of the rubric, except we went really fast. When we timed ourselves, we were at 5 minutes 30 seconds each time, but our actual talk was 4 minutes 18 seconds. The balloon idea actually worked surprisingly. I was worried that it would take away from our talk, but it seemed to enforce it. Ella and I met up twice outside of school for 6 hours total to work on the talk. We skyped several times and practiced it completely at least three times. I learnt that a lot of work goes into things that last for less than 5 minutes. Listening to other talks was really interesting because I did not know what to expect going in, and I learnt what everyone was interested in

20 Time Individual reflection

For my twenty time project, I wanted a project that had something based in psychology because it is super fascinating to me and I never really get a chance to explore it. Both Ella and I wanted a psychology based project.  After doing some research, Ella and I came across the "Fun Theory". It seemed interesting and, at the time, the most reasonable theory to use in our project with the materials we had. It showed cause and effect between making boring things fun and a willingness to do it more. We chose to try and answer the question how can we use the Fun Theory to improve our everyday lives? Our goal was not to prove the fun theory, but rther to find a way to use it. This really challenged my creativity, as we needed to think of mundane/hated activities and how to make them fun. I wanted to find a way(s) to slightly improve my daily life, and if possible, the life of the student body at Saratoga High. 

First, we had to come up with a list of things we disliked, found boring, or were generally mundane. This was quite easy. It was more difficult to figure out ways to make them fun that were doable,cheap, and not time consuming. For example, we thought about making fancy shapes out of disliked food such as tomatoes. We realized that people may eat them if someone else made it for them, but were not going to take the time to do it themselves. If we found a way to make something fun, we quickly asked around and found that most people did not consider either the activity boring or the improvement fun. We kept on getting stuck on the definition of the word "fun" and often switched around our main question. This was quite time-wasting. Three vague experiment ideas only came up by the beginning and middle of April. 

The project was not very successful. It is definitely something that needed to be long term. Our brainstorming took too long and gave us too little time to carry out the experiments. We needed to spend a lot more time on this outside of allotted twenty time. We have gathered data from one experiment, and are trying to finish up two short ones. Realistically, only one will be completed. I learnt that it is good to have a solid plan before starting, and too not get very caught up with brainstorming. It is easier to have a fixed product or conclusion to reach than to build off a theory. If I could do this project again, I would definitely do something psychology based again, but with more reliable results/experiments/products. I would have tried to answer a question rather than apply a psychological theory to everyday life. For the Fun theory, I may have tried to prove it or see if people use it in their daily lives. This project feels that it is just starting. Potentially, it could be investigated very thoroughly, however, we would need more resources. It was difficult to find a list of ways to improve daily life without set-up, expenses or on a daily basis. We would have liked to have a longer list to share with our classmates on how they can improve their daily lives. Unfortunately, we only have a couple. I may try to find fun improvements to my daily life or give suggestions to my friends if they complain about a boring aspect of their lives.

Unit 9 Reflection

In this unit, we learnt about the kingdoms and phyla of the taxonomic levels, including some major classes. The tree of life was a huge concept in this unit. It shows how different kingdoms have evolved over time, how some emerged, and from where they got their features. These features develop through natural selection. All living organisms are divided into different levels: domain, kingdom, phylum, class, order, family, genus and species. The division helps scientists study organisms that are more closely related and learn about specific characteristics. To see the evolutionary relationships, scientists use cladograms, which show where new traits appeared

Photo link

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There are three main domains and six kingdoms. Domain Archaea contains organims that live in extreme environments. We do not have much information on them since they live in places that are difficult to reach/study. Domain bacteria contains eubacteria. They come in a variety of shapes and produce antibiotics. Viruses are classified as non living,but they contain genetic material. Once they latch onto a host, they come to "life" and begin making copies of themselves to infect other organisms. Some people theorize that viruses were the basis of life, and that it evolved to become alive. Domain Archaea and Bacteria were the earliest forms of life and they may have reconnected to form Domain Eukarya, which contains the forms of life that we are more familiar with.

Kingdom Plantae is made of plants. All of them perform photosynthesis to obtain sugars. All phyla except bryophyta use a vascular system to transport nutrients. Phylum Angiosperm are all the flowering/ fruit plants which provide us with fruit to eat.Kingdom Fungi is quite different from plants. Their cells walls are made of chitin and they absorb food through their hyphae. They can reproduce sexually or asexually. Along with bacteria, they are the main decomposers in any ecosystem.

Most animals - 97% - do not have backbones. These are called invertebrates.Sponges are the most primitive types of animals, since they are closely related to protists. Cnidarians are similar, but they have specialized tissues. Flatworms are solid and can move around, but their guts are incomplete or not there. Mollusks have a complete digestive tract and a type of respiratory system. The evolution of traits to support more complex life keep developing. Phylum Arthropoda are even more so adapted. They have exoskeletons and sensory systems/ antennas. Insects are the dominant arthropods, and to the disgust of some humans, can be found almost everywhere. Crustaceans are the marine version of arthropods. Phylum Echinodermata is the closest related to vertebrates, they are on the same branch. They use a water vascular system.

Vertebrates make up the other 3% of animals. All belong to Phylum Chordata. Class Agnatha were the first recognizable vertebrates but were jawless fish. Condricthyes are fish that have cartilaginous skeletons and jaws. Osteicythes  have jaws and bony skeletons. They have an operculum that helps protect the gills and move water over them so the fish does not have to constantly move to live. The fish develop over time due to natural selection. Amphibians are the transitionary class since they can live on both water and land. The tiktaalik was the transitionary animal. Its fins became strong enough to support its weight so it could walk.

Tiktaalik

Reptiles are cold blooded and have a three chamber heart like the amphibians. Classes Aves and mammalia are warm blooded and have four chamber hearts. Class Aves consists of all the birds. The archaeopteryx was a animal that was between the stage of dinosaurs(reptile) to birds. Mammals are the organisms we think of as "animals". They have active large brains, complex social, feeding and reproductive behaviors and hair. We are mammals. Millions of years of evolution has helped shaped our species today.


The concepts were not hard this unit, however, it was a lot of information to absorb. I kept mixing up different characteristics of different phyla.I want to learn more about the transitionary animals. How do the animals change anatomically? Will the human race evolve into a new species? Why have we not discovered all the species on earth yet? How come the human race is dominant and if we go extinct who will take over next? Are humans doing a bad thing by keeping endangered species? Why do people misclassify organisms all the time?

For my What on Earth Evolved? presentation, I chose the Archaeopteryx. It fascinated me because it was an extinct species and I wanted to learn more about it. I learnt some very interesting facts, since the species has a lot of mystery and controversy surrounding it and the facts changed almost every year. My presentation could have gone much better.  I was super nervous because it was my first presentation in biology so I did not know what to expect. I did not have many words but rather more pictures. I like to explain and not be held down to a script. I could have explained things a lot better and I should have run through it out loud a few more times. I felt that I held most people's attention since there was not much for them to see on the screen. For my TED talk, I will definitely practice more and stay calm. Although it is May, I am proud that I stuck to my New Year's goal all through April, especially with biology. I finished vodcasts the day they were assigned and I started on my presentation three weeks before. I also spread out my studying the best for this test.

My Inner Fish

   Your Inner Fish by Neil Shubin explains how our ancestors that may look very different from us gave us many of our characteristics today. Fish are the most distant ancestors of our modern hands. They were the first to show the system of one bone, two bones, many bones in limbs/fins. Scientists studied fish embryos and found many fossils to support this. Many organisms look the same during early stages in development until Hox genes turn on and specialize the cells to grow into whatever the organism is.
   The sonic hedgehog gene emits a signal to tell cells where they are in the body. Based on that, they grow certain limbs and fingers. The closer the signal, the pinky finger grows and the furthest the thumb. This is related to the specialization of cells. The sonic hedgehog gene may have developed through natural selection as organisms started becoming more complex. I wonder how the sonic hedgehog gene works in detail and how it came about. Would having extra finger through mutation actually become favored?
   The tiktaalik is one of the greatest finds connecting fish to land animals. It swam mostly, but its fins could support its body weight enough so it could walk on land. This trait came through natural selection - favoring stronger fins and wrists. Tiktaalik could also move its neck to watch for predators. It was the transitionary fossil between fish and amphibians. The first fossil was almost a rare specimen, which is a very lucky find. I wonder how one scientist was so lucky that he discovered so many breakthroughs in science? How did it stay intact for millions of years? How did the scientists know where to look? If it had a favored trait then why did it die out?
   The video also talks about mammals and reptiles- how they passed down their sense of hearing. There was one jawbone and one ear bone. Over time, the ear bone and parts jawbone formed the ear. Mammals also developed their hair because of the cold and a way to communicate with other animals. The parts of our body we use everyday and almost every second come from our ancestors that look nothing like us.

Fish fin developed into hand

Photo link