On March 3rd our Year 12 IB Biology class took part in an  educational visit to the Reach Out Lab at Imperial College London. In the lab, some volunteer students from Imperial led us through three experiments. The first experiment we did was a microscope experiment where we had to squash garlic root tips and add hydrochloric acid to separate the cells by breaking down the tissue which binds cells together. After this we stained our cells on a glass slide and put it under the microscope where, after a few attempts at getting the microscope to focus, we were able to identify the stages of mitosis! The second experiment that we carried out was a blood typing experiment. Blood typing is a method to tell what type of blood you have. In this experiment we had different samples of synthetic blood and had to figure out which blood type it is which was really interesting to do. We had to identify the blood type by observing which sample agglutinated (stuck together) when we added different antibodies. This experiment mimicked how this could be done in a police investigation where they use blood typing to identify the suspect!  The last experiment we carried out was a cuttlefish dissection. This was an experiment that everyone found interesting to do because it’s something that we haven’t done before so it was a very good opportunity for us. We had to cut up the squid in a specific way and we had to find specific organs that it had. Using the organs we had to determine whether the squid was a female or female. These experiments helped us to further our knowledge of the things we are learning in class such as the physiology topic we are currently studying about how different systems in the body work. This visit was a fantastic opportunity to ask the Imperial College ambassadors about university and life on campus as next academic year we will be applying for universities. I really enjoyed this trip as it was a really great experience for our class and we hope to have more trips to Imperial to further develop our knowledge on IB Biology and take part in more experiments to help us learn more about the topic we are studying in class.