AP Biology

Introductory Gel Electrophoresis

In a project with the goal of learning about Gel Electrophoresis, students cast their own agarose gels, loaded the dyes with micropipettes, and ran the electrophoresis units to separate out the sample by both chargee and molecular size. By doing this, they were able to identify an unknown sample by comparing it to the bands of the known sample using biotechnology tools.

Wisconsin Fast Plants

Students grew Wisconsin fast plants, during their unit on heredity. They observed the traits of stem pigmentation and leaf pigmentation in the F2 generation of a Dihybrid Cross Lab. Students compared the observed values with the expected values using a Chi-square analysis.

Meiosis Modeling

AP Biology students have been learning all about meiosis. They have been studying models of Meiosis I and Meiosis II for the benefit of understanding how the process happens. Now, they know how and when genetic diversity is increased in forming gametes as well as how and when chromosome number is reduced to form haploid gametes.

Enzyme Function Modeling

To learn more about how enzymes function, students used different colors of clay to model the appearance and placement of individual properties. They researched the factors that affect enzyme reaction rate, as well as how enzymes lower activation energy. Students then embedded these into slideshows and explained what they were showing with their models through captions.

Toothpickase

Going into the month of November, students have begun to learn about enzyme activity. To do this, a lab was conducted and students graphed and analyzed the effect of reaction rate with the introduction of a competitive inhibitor. They used toothpicks to model digestive enzymes and substrates with their fingers.

Catalase Lab

Last week, students investigated the effect of temperature on the activity of enzymes by capturing the Oxygen that was produced by yeast catalase as it broke H2O2 into H2O and O2. Students then found standard deviation and standard error of the rate of Oxygen production in order to compare enzyme activity at the different temperatures.