Letter to a Biology Student

Hi, my name is Siyona Suresh, I am a freshman in high school, and a sophomore when you will be in this class. I am 13 years old and interested in no particular subject really, and not particularly gifted in a specific subject either. This year I took Biology, Algerbra 2H, English 9, Intro to Engineering, Spanish, and  Geo/Health. Outside of school my interests are classical dancing, and spending quiet time with a book. When I first entered this classroom, I was nervous, it was my first day in high school and I didn't really know what to expect. But throughout the year I have learned a lot, and I will share what I have learned with you.

This class is a little different than most classes, it's what is called a flipped classroom. This means that instead of listening and taking notes on lectures at school, you will be doing it at home. Every night you will get a vodcast for homework, and that will be a video lecture for you to do that night (These take around 30 minutes to do). Now that you know what the class is about, lets talk about what happens in the classroom. When you first enter the classroom, write your homework down, take out your homework from the night before, and start working on the DO NOW which will be posted on the board. Typically throughout the class, we will be working through a lab, as we already listened to his lectures at home. There is no need to worry that much about quizzes and tests, because it is all multiple choice, as long as you have gone over the vodcasts you will be fine. Another thing to talk about is the blog and notebook you will be working on. Your notebook will contain all the vodcasts we do and the DO NOW's and will also have a table of contents in the beginning to refer back to. It is good to make sure your notebook is always up to date because there will be a notebook check at the end of every unit where you will get graded on how well your notebook has been kept. Your blog which is on the website blogger.com is where you will do lab write ups, and reflections of the things you have learned. I will put a link to one of my favorite blogposts at the bottom of this page.

Next, I think it is important to establish that Mr. Orre has pet peeves, and you should be aware of them. After finishing a lab, be sure to clean up your work space and leave it exactly as it was before or you are in for trouble. Another pet peeve is that when he tells you to work on something, do not do anything else, for an example if he tells you to get out your computer to write something up, don't pull up your grades and ask him about it. To do well in this class, you should do every vodcast because ultimately that is what is going to be on the test. Three mistakes I can share with you so that you can learn from them are: Don't ignore the CFUs (tiny not-graded quizzes you will take after every vodcast) because the questions on the CFUs will more than likely be on the quiz. Don't tune out Mr. Orre's voice on vodcasts or put him on mute, because although it saves time you will never really learn much without listening and paying attention. Lastly, don't slack of when you get class time to do homework, because you will regret it when you go home and have to do a bunch more homework. I think if I had learned these three lessons earlier on in the year, I would have had a much smoother year in first semester. But now that I have learned and am doing these three things, my grades have improved and I have definitely become a better student overall.

Overall I would have to say that this class was not one of my favorite classes, but it was definitely a good learning experience. It was interesting to experience a flipped classroom for the first time, and learn what it was about and how it felt like compared to other classrooms. I definitely learned a lot about bio, and will be taking AP Bio later on in high school. Next year I have plans to be taking Chem Honors because I think chem will be a fun class, and a completely different and new field of science to explore. Biology is a fun subject to explore, and as long as you remember my three key tips and keep and open mind, this year should be fun and exciting!

Link to my Blogpost: Siyona'sBlogpost

- Siyona Suresh

20 Time Final Blog Post

For my 20 Time Project, I tested the placebo effect to see if it actually works. To do this I created 15 general knowledge questions, and gave one group of 6 people a positive feedback about the test before they took it and another 6 people negative feedback. For an example for the positive group, before the test I said, "This test is a very basic general knowledge quiz, nothing to worry about. Everyone who takes this test passes." I wanted to see if the people who received negative feedback did worse on the test than the people who received positive feedback. After testing I found that the people who received positive feedback did better, but it wasn't a drastic difference, they only did slightly better. Here is a picture of the graphs I made of my data:

 As you can tell from the graph, the differences are subtle, but they are there. I think that if I had maybe taken a bigger group of people, or more questions I would have gotten a more dramatic difference in my data. So if I could do my project again that is probably what I would change.

Evaluating myself on this project, I think I did a good job. I spent my class time effectively by researching for the project, learning more about the effect so I could effectively plan an experiment around it without the use of pills like most placebo experiments are conducted, prepping the experiment (such as writing the general knowledge questions), and analyzing my data. I would give myself an A because I think I worked hard throughout this project and produced the results as well. Here is a link to my previous blog on my 20 time : http://iisiyonaii.blogspot.com/2017/03/placebo-effect-research.html

Pig Dissection Reflection

In this lab, we dissected a pig and learned about its anatomy, its different parts and what they look like. From this lab I was able to see what the different organs and body structures actually look like, and apply what I had learned from the vodcasts about the different systems such as respiratory and digestive systems in the dissection. For an example, I was able to see the heart and lungs which were part of the respiratory system, and also the intestines, stomach, and esophagus which are all part of the digestive system.
This dissection relate to me and my body, because a lot of the structures in the pig are similar to the structures in a human body and also my body. So by doing the pig dissection I was able to learn a lot about myself and how my body functions on a day to day basis.

 Video for Pig Dissection:

20 Time Individual Reflection

For my 20 time project, I decided to test the placebo effect to see if it really works. The reason I chose this experiment is because I had read about the placebo effect in the book Chomp by Carl Hiassen and wondered if the placebo effect was a real thing that could actually have an effect on us. I decided that 20 time was the perfect place to test this and find out, because it was something that has interested me ever since I read that book. My goal at the end of this project was to find out if the placebo effect really did work. After researching about the effect a bit in the beginning stages of 20 time, I made the hypothesis that it would work, but only to a certain extent (there would not be a huge change).

Initially my experiment was to give one group of students who say they are extremely tired in the morning a caffeine pill and the other group of students a placebo pill which had nothing in it. However I quickly realized that I would probably not be allowed to give people pills as part of my experiment as that is not allowed. My second experiment was to gather a group of 10-20 students and give them a general knowledge test. However before the test one group was told that it was easy and they shouldn't worry about it, and one group was told that it was very hard but they should try their best on it. I thought that with the positive feedback in the beginning the students would do better on the test and with the negative feedback the students would do worse.

To test my experiment, after church I gathered a group of 12 students who had volunteered to participate who were in the 8-11th grade. I put 6 of them in one room and 6 of them in another room and administered the tests with the negative and positive feedback. After they left, I tallied up how many questions each person got wrong and found that the effect did work to some extent. There was a difference between getting positive and negative feedback before the test, but it was not very drastic. The people who had gotten the positive feedback had done slightly better.

I think this project was a success in that I learned a lot about the placebo effect, and I was able to explore something that was interesting to me and learn about it.  I learned a lot of valuable lessons and soft skills; the most important one being time management. Since we were only given a short amount of time each week to work on the project, I had to learn how to split up how I spent my time efficiently. I also came up across different articles with conflicting information, so I learned how to find which article was really credible and which one wasn't and which information was actually accurate. If I had a chance to do this project again, something I would do differently is spend less time researching and more time doing. I spent the majority of time in the beginning of this project researching when I could have progressed further with my experiment. I think I spent too much time preparing for the experiment when I could have started earlier.

Although this experiment was very interesting, I don't think I will be continuing it. This is because my only question was to know if the effect worked and I accomplished that through this experiment. However, I will share this with others because I found the fact that our minds can play simple tricks on us fascinating, and I think it will be fascinating to others as well.

Link to my last 20 time post: Click here

Unit 9 Reflection

In this Unit I learned about how organisms are classified. I learned about the different taxonomic levels--from largest to smallest--Domain, Kingdom, Phylum, Class, Order, Family, Genus, and species. Then we went more into depth about what were the different domains and kingdoms, and what species could be classified into them. There are three domains, Archae, Bacteria, and Eukarya. Eukarya is split into 4 kingdoms, protista, animalia, plantae, and fungi. Animalia is a multi cellular heterotroph. Plantae is a photosynthetic organism. Fungi is a consumer that feed on either dead or decaying organic matter. Finally, Protista is anything that doesn't fit into the other three kingdoms. Inside these kingdoms, you can find many phylums. For an example in the Plantae, some of the phylums are angiosperms and gymnosperms. Gymnosperms are cone bearing plants and angiosperms are flowering plants. Once you keep grouping things together into smaller and smaller groups based on similar characteristics, you finally get a species. In this Unit we also learned more about evolution and how these organisms came to place and how they all became such different species. We learned that life started from unicellular organisms and gradually multicellular, and when these organisms started to adapt to their environments they developed different features, and thus new species were evolved. These species, continued to evolve with some of them dying out, and through this constant process of evolution, we have the organisms that we see today.

To enforce this idea of evolution, in this Unit we also did the What on Earth Evolved (WEE) presentations. We each got to pick one organism from the book written by Christopher Lloyd, and present on how it evolved and how it had an effect on us. I picked algae as my organism. I learned a lot about algae that I didn't know before such as it is being made into biofuels which could cut down pollution, and that it was such a crucial part of our food web. Presenting was fairly easy as I felt like I knew my material well, and I felt comfortable enough to come and talk in front of the class. If I could do it over, I would probably make more of an effort to memorize my slides, because I feel that reading off of slides does not get your information across as well as speaking does. However this was a good learning experience, and I definitely know more about public speaking and algae than I did before.

All in all, I would say this Unit was one of my favorites. I love learning about species and animals that I never knew existed. One of my favorite parts was looking at some of these animals up close. We had a collection of dissected animals in the class, and we had to identify what taxa they belonged in. I loved looking at these animals up close, especially the ones that I had never seen before.

Unit 8 Reflection:

Previous Reflection


Here is my WEE presentation:

Geologic Timeline Reflection

In this project, we constructed a timeline that shows how Earth has progressed since the beginning to now. 3 major events that happened during Earth's history was the Cambrian Explosion, the Cenozoic Era, and the formation of cyanobacteria. All these events has a big effect on life on Earth, and influence how life exists today. The Cambrian Explosion was an event in which many different species and types of animals suddenly appeared. It led to a sudden diversity of life, a big change to the microscopic life that previously existed on Earth. The Cenozoic Era was the "age of the mammals." During this era, mammals like mammoths, beavers, and primates came about. This eventually led to humans because we evolved gradually from primates. Finally, cyanobacteria was what first created oxygen on earth. Cyanobacteria are a photosynthetic bacteria that produced oxygen as waste. This was very important because all life needs oxygen to live, and cyanobacteria created a huge boost in diversity of life on Earth. These three events had a huge effect on Earth and how it is today.

Earth's history is very, very long. Each millimeter represented a million years, and the whole timeline was almost 10 meters long, which shows how long Earth's history really is. However what surprised me the most was that, what we consider history (human history) was so tiny, it could not even be represented on the timeline. This was shocking because it makes you think about how tiny your life is on Earth compared to the history of all life on Earth. Another thing that shocked me was how long there was very basic life on Earth. More than 75% of the timeline consisted of the Precambrian Era, where only simple bacteria existed.

What I have learned from this project is that the world only very recently looked like the world we see now. In fact so recently that it can not even be represented in our timeline. All the inventions and new creations we have made have, and all the wars that were fought have no significance compared to the long span of time that Earth has existed. However, in the short time we have been on Earth we have made impacts. Considering that we have only been here for a "blink of an eye" compared to the rest of history, I think that we have made a pretty big impact on life and on Earth. 

20 Time Update #3 on Placebo Experiment

During the past few weeks, I have come across a few setbacks. One being that I realized I needed to come up with a placebo experiment that does not involve pills, as I am not allowed to give pills to students. So after some research, I came up with an experiment that was pill free. My idea is to gather a group of 10-20 students and split them up into 2 groups. I will then take the first group in and tell them that I am giving them a very easy test, that everyone has passed so far. This gives them the impression and the confidence that they can do well on the (general knowledge) test. Then I will take the next group in and tell them the opposite, that the test is extremely hard and to just try their best, giving them the impression that they will not do well. Then I will collect the data and see if me giving the group a placebo (confidence boost) helped them.

The second setback is that I need to find people to participate in my experiment. If I used my friends as test subjects, they may not take the experiment seriously, and my data may be altered because of that. A solution to my problem would be to either create a facebook poll to see if people would like to participate, or ask my classmates if they would like to. I hope to start my experiment in the next week or so. Now I definitely have a much better understanding of how the placebo effect can take place not just with pills but also without. I have made a lot of progress in my project and will continue to. 

Unit 8 Reflection

In this Unit, we learned about evolution, and different factors that go with evolution or effect evolution. Charles Darwin, the one who first discovered the theory of evolution, taught us many things on how evolution really works. For an example, we learned about artificial selection which is when humans select traits and breed for them, this lets humans breed for the traits that are more useful to them, and the population evolves like the human wants it to. We learned about natural selection which is when the population weeds out traits that doesn't help it survive, evolution is caused by natural selection. A way to measure evolution is through measuring the allele frequency in a population. The allele frequency in a population can change as the individuals of the population produce offspring; as the allele frequency changes, the population evolves. Next we learned about speciation, which is the rise of 2 or more species from one existing species, this can happen because of the separation of a population which can create new traits and eventually a new species. We also learned about how life came about to the Earth so many years ago. Life started as very simple cells, then evolved into more complex cells until finally it formed  small plants and animals. In a broad scale of time, life has evolved very rapidly on Earth both biotically and abiotically. Finally we learned why evolution really is something that takes place, and what evidence there is to support the theory of evolution. Embryology is something that supports the theory of evolution. It shows that many species have similar stages of embryo development, which suggests common ancestry. 

This Unit was very intriguing, and I learned a lot. Although we have learned about evolution before, I feel like this Unit went much more in depth and I have a much greater understanding. I definitely want to go more in depth in certain aspects such as, the reasons to support evolution. I found it very interesting that species have many things in common including the stages their embryos go through. This Unit was also very fun in that we did some very interesting labs. One lab that I really enjoyed was the Hunger Games Lab. The Hunger Games Lab mimicked what survival would be like in the wild, from fighting for our food, to trying to find a mate. This lab helped me visualize evolution and how it really takes place in nature.


In this Unit we watched a video on how to be assertive. It talked about having good posture and good leadership skills, in order to be more respected wherever you are. I have tried to apply some of these to my daily life by trying to keep good posture, and making direct eye contact with whomever I am speaking to. However I can still work on speaking more assertively, so my voice and opinion is heard and taken seriously wherever I go.

Link to Hunger Games Lab

Hunger Games Lab Analysis

1. In this lab we were all assigned a species of bird, either a stumpy, knuckler, or a pincher. Stumpies were at a disadvantage because they picked up their food with their wrists, knucklers with there knuckles, and pincher with their thumb and index fingers. Once we has been assigned a species, we waited until the food was put out by our teacher, and then we gathered as much as we could to survive. This simulated how species have to survive in the wild, with a limited food source and lots of competition to survive and reproduce.

2. The phenotype that was the best at capturing food was the pinchers. This  was because they only had to grab between their two fingers and not something drastic or hard such as grabbing between wrists like a stumpy. Pinching is a normal human, easy, and basic human movement and the rest were not.

3. The population evolved so that the recessive allele ended with the most members in it. I know this by looking at my data. In the very start of the experiment, the polulation was closed to balance with the A allele frequency being .52 and the a allele frequency being .48. By the end of the experiment, the A allele frequency was at a mere .27 and the a allele frequency was at .73.

4. In this lab, one of the things that was not random was the mating. People mated with others that they thought would give them better offspring, for an example a pincher would most likely always mate with a pincher. Something that was random in this experiment was the food placement. The food was placed in random places by our teacher, so that we had no idea where it was. If the food happened to be near you, you were lucky and if it wasn't you were out of luck and not guaranteed to survive through that round.

5. If the food had been smaller, I think it would have made it even harder for the stumpies to survive, because it would have been very hard to grab such a small object with your wrist. However if the objects were larger, it would have made it harder for the knucklers because large objects are harder to fit in between your knuckles, as it is not a large space. Since the pinchers are such an adaptable species I don't think having larger or smaller food would have affected them that much, because you can grab almost anything with your fingers.

6. If there was not incomplete dominance, the results may have been different. This is because the knucklers would not be in the population and so there would be less competition overall. There would just be competition between the stumpies and the pinchers.

7. Natural selection selects certain genes that are advantageous for survival, which leads to evolution. This is because as they pick the traits that are better suited to survive, the other traits are weeded out, and the population starts to evolve such that the population now looks like the survivors.

8. Some strategies that individuals adopted to survive were laying on top of the food to claim it, and then taking it all for themselves. This ensured that they got a good amount of food, because no one else could touch the food that they were laying on top of. This would effect the allele frequency, because the frequency of the individuals species with better strategies would go up. This relates to nature because in nature animals adopt certain traits that can help them survive and reproduce such as camouflage.

9. In evolution the species with the stronger traits for survival evolves. Natural selection acts on the phenotype because nature doesn't know your genotype, but it does know your phenotype. So the species that are better suited for survival will continue to reproduce; survival of the fittest.

10. I think this lab was very beneficial to my understanding of this topic, and I do not have any further questions remaining.

Placebo Effect Research

Over the past two weeks, I have done a lot more research and read into studies that have already happened testing the placebo effect. I am beginning to get a better sense of how exactly I will conduct my experiment, and what to expect. Some placebo effect studies tested on whether taking a placebo pill that is said to improve grades actually tricked the persons mind into thinking that it did, to studies that tested whether the placebo effect could improve medical conditions. I have learned that this effect can't be used for something big like cancer, but could very well work on smaller things like chronic headaches.

Some setbacks I have had is getting people to join my experiment. Because I can not tell people that the product they will be receiving is placebo (has nothing in it), it makes it a little tricky to find people who are totally willing to participate in your experiment. I have found two people but I hope to find more by talking to more people about my project. The next steps in my project are to find more people to participate in my experiment, and start conducting it. I have learned that science can be really fascinating, and some of the experiments I have been reading up on are very intriguing. I know that even if my experiment does not turn out the way I hope it does, I have come out of this with a good experience and lots of new knowledge. 

Unit 7 Reflection

In this Unit we focused on Ecology. Specifically, we learned about food chains and food webs, populations in an ecosystem, the overall health of our ecosystem, and ways we can improve the health of our environment. Food chains have 5 trophic levels : At the very top is quaternary consumer, then tertiary consumer, then secondary consumer, then primary consumer, and lastly the primary producer. Although food chains are great, food webs are more accurate because they show the animals eating more than one thing which is usually what happens. As we go up the trophic levels, only 10% of the energy is passed on to the next level. This means that there is a less amount of animals at the very top of the trophic levels, and much more in the bottom (producers). Next we learned about populations, and things like carrying capacity. Then we learned about how our environment is in need of help, and we enforced this idea by watching documentaries like Bag-it and Story of Stuff. We learned that if we ever want a world for the future generations, we need to start taking care of our planet now.

Another thing we did this Unit is the Conservation Biology Project. In this project we picked the Belize Barrier Reef, and did some research on it. We found that a lot of the reef was getting destroyed by pollution and bleaching. Together as a team we put together a slide show and made a video on what exactly was going on with the reef and how we could put a stop to it. Our team did a good job of collaborating, and everyone contributed in every way they could. Each person was assigned a portion of the work, and everybody did their fair share. At times, we would lose focus on our task and stray into fun and conversation, but I think our team did an excellent job with collaboration and working hard.

I learned a lot from this Unit. But some of the facts on how much we were polluting our planet were so astounding. I think we can all learn a lesson from this, and make a conscious effort to recycle more, and reuse more. Our ecosystem is precious and needs to be preserved. This unit was definitely eye opening, and I hope we can continue to learn more about this later on in the year. 

Story of Stuff Notes

Materials Economy - Not a good system because its a linear system on a finite planet, can't run indefinitely. And its reacting with society, cultures, people, etc.

First step in the system is Extraction:
Extraction trashes the planet because we are running out of natural resources. 

Next is Production:
This is where we use energy to mix toxic chemicals with the resources. Many of these chemicals mix with our environment and people and harms them. A lot of this toxic is in products but a lot more toxic is in pollution. 

Distribution:
Sell these products at stores. We don't pay for the real price of things, instead child laborers pay with their future, and the environment pays by it getting destroyed. 

- planned obsolescense means "planned for the dumps" meaning products are made so they can be thrown away such as paper cups, new versions of electronics, etc.

- perceived obsolescence means making us buy new things so we have the latest designs and so we have the "latest designs" 

- National happiness has gone down since the huge consumer boom, and half of the stuff we buy gets trashed

Disposal:
Majority of the products we buy gets trashed. Some of this gets incinerated or dumped into the landfill. Both wastes an enormous amount of energy. Incineration creates super toxins which is even worse than just plain pollution. Recycling helps but is not the solution.

Solutions:
- We can still transform this system into something that works much better
- Renewable Resources

20 Time Project...Does the placebo effect really work?

This is an introduction to a new project I am working on for 20 time in my biology class. 20 time is a certain amount of time given in class to students, so they can explore topics and  experiment with things they are interested in.

For my 20 time project the essential question I have asked is whether the placebo effect really works. The reason I chose this as my project is because I have read about this effect in multiple books and I have always wondered whether it really works.

My goals at the end of this is to become more knowledgeable and to figure out if the placebo effect does actually work. I will measure this experiment by assembling a group of people who are willing to participate in this project and giving them a pill with nothing in it, and telling them it will help them be less groggy in the morning. If by the end of the experiment they tell me that this pill has helped them and they are much less groggy in the morning, we know that the experiment worked. My plan moving forward is to do more research into the the effect, and then hopefully start testing!

Unit 6 Reflection

In this Unit we learned about, Biology and its applications in the real word. We learned about the many fields biotech is used such as agriculture, engineering, and medicine, and their applications in the fields such as genetically engineering food or GMOs. Then we learned about processes and things done in biotech such as gel electrophoresis and DNA sequencing. Gel Electrophoresis is when electricity is used to separate  DNA fragments based on size. We did a lab on this, where we did the electrophoresis and saw how the tiny gene particles moved farther or closer together and clumped together based on their size. We also learned the applications of phoresis which is studying proteins and genetic fingerprinting. The next thing we learned about was recombinant DNA which was kind of an overlap with what we had learned in the previous semester, the central dogma of biology. Recombinant DNA is the inserting of DNA of one organism into the DNA of another organism or in other words genetic engineering. The final thing we touched on was bioethics and what it means. Bioethics is the study of decision making as it applies to moral decisions that have to be made because of advances in biology. Some examples of bioethical questions that are faced is should drug companies be allowed to patent genes? or Should we genetically modify embryos?

Some of my weaknesses in this Unit were understanding certain concepts like pGLO, and getting a good grasp on the different types of bioengineering and biotech because I didn't realize biology could be applied to so many fields. Some of my strengths were bioethics because I do a good job of keeping up with the news, so I knew about the problems biotechnology was coming across and  the many bioethical questions that were being posed. However for the concepts I didn't fully grasp, the labs did a good job of enforcing the concepts. In this Unit we did the pGLO lab and the candy gel electrophoresis lab.

I want to go more in depth with biotech because I find some of the things we can do with such advanced tech in biology extremely fascinating. Especially things like altering genes to make a totally customized human or animal, or even cloning living things. Some of the articles that we read in class were extremely fascinating as well. I think I did a good job of fulfilling my new years goal that I set for myself.* My goal was to never skip vodcasts and listen to the full thing without skimming to better understand the concepts, and I definitely did that. My second goal was to not procrastinate and get my assignments done on time, and this Unit I have been doing a good job of that, I think overall I have learned a lot about Biology and its applications in the real world and have improved as a student.

*http://iisiyonaii.blogspot.com/2017/01/smart-goals.html

pGLO Lab

pGLO Observations , Data Recording & Analysis

1.

Obtain your team plates.  Observe your set of  “+pGLO” plates under room light and with UV light.  Record numbers of colonies and color of colonies. Fill in the table below. Plate Number of Colonies Color of colonies under room light Color of colonies under   UV light - pGLO LB 0 Opaque white white + pGLO LB/amp Around 50 Opaque white white + pGLO LB/amp/ara Around 75 Opaque white Glowing green

2.	What two new traits do your transformed bacteria have?
	Our new bacteria grew/multiplied in colonies and can glow when under the UV light.  The new bacteria are also now resistant to ampicillin.
3.	Estimate how many bacteria were in the 100 uL of bacteria that you spread on each plate. Explain your logic. In the 100 uL of bacteria, I estimate that there were about 50-80 bacteria. This is because a colony is one bacteria that split up to form more, so if you count the colonies then you will get an estimate on how many bacteria there are.
4.	What is the role of arabinose in the plates? The role of arabinose in the plates is to make the bacteria is to make the bacteria glow when the UV light is shined on them.  It glows because arabinose makes the plasmid produce GFP and shine under UV light.
5.	List and briefly explain three current uses for GFP (green fluorescent protein) in research or applied science. 3 current uses for GFP in research or applied science is they can be applied to cancer cells, so doctors can track and observe the cancer cells for developing a cure or just for research. The second reason that I found is scientists attach GFP to insulin producing cells for diabetic research. Another way GFP is used is to track the spread of diseases like HIV.
6.	Give an example of another application of genetic engineering. An application of genetic engineering is in the food industry. A lot of our foods are GMOs or Genetically Modified. Farmers change the makeup of crops to make them more visually pleasing and last longer and more preventative to diseases.

Candy Electrophoresis Lab

1. When I analyzed the results of my gel electrophoresis lab, my results were that nothing had really moved except for the red and blue dye. The red dye band and the blue dye band's width was the same as it's reference band.  However the red dye traveled father than the blue dye which signifies that the red dye is smaller than the blue.

2.  The dye bentanin would probably move towards the blue dye because both of those are bigger than other dyes which means that they would probably come together. Likewise, Citrus Red 2 might move towards Red 40 because they are also similar in size.

3.  Dog food manufacturers put artificial food colors in dog food in order to make the food more appealing, and to make dog owners feel like they want that for the their pet. The more fresh it looks (by adding dye) the more pet owners feel like that is  what they should be feeding their dogs.

5. The factors that control how far a dye migrates is what size the dye is : smaller dyes move father than larger dyes and also the positive pull on the particles determine how far they move. In gel electrophoresis, the reason they move is because there is a positive electrical current pulling it, so that electrical current is a factor to how much the particles move.

6. The force that helps move dyes through the gel is the electrical current. The particles being pulled have a negative charge and there is a positive charge on the other side which is pulling the particles toward it.

7. The smaller particles or dyes move faster  and farther than the longer and larger particles of dye of dye. This is because the positive electric current pulls the smaller ones farther than the larger ones.

8. I would expect the molecules with a mass of 600 to move the furthest then the 1000 then the 2000 and lastly the 5000 to move not that far from its starting place. 

SMART goals

My goal for this class is to make sure I watch the vodcast entirely without skimming or not paying attention. I want to do this so I get a better grasp of the information, so I will not come to class unprepared to have a discussion of what I just learned. Another part of my goal is to not be afraid to watch the vodcast one more time if it is on a concept I do not fully understand. In order to make sure I don't get distracted mid-vodcast, I will try to remember to wear headphones every time I listen do a vodcast to cancel out distractions around me.

My second goal is to not procrastinate, because in first semester that was a big issue for me. I want to learn how to manage my time more effectively. By doing so, I will have more time to take up more extracurriculars or anything I want to do. The way I can achieve this goal is by coming home and going straight to studying rather than watching things on YouTube and Netflix which often leads me to procrastinating for hours.  Doing both of these will definitely help me work to my ultimate goal which is to be a better student in second semester than I was in first semester.