Blog 6: Marking Period 2

This is the 6th blog that I have written and I think that I will talk about some of the things that I have learned this week. This weeks topic is ENZYMES! I think that this is one of the only topics that I feel very strongly about. I really like the way of teaching that Mr.Gardener has been doing. I hope that we will be continuing this method as the year goes on. Anyway, Enzymes end in the letters ASE, and so that means that it is easier to understand what a substances is based on its ending. I know that amino acids are joined together by a peptide bond. Enthalpy is the measure of heat energy, and Entropy is the randomness and disorder. Yeah and I learned a lot of other things this week and I will keep you posted as the weeks continue.

Blog 5: Marking Period 2

In this blog I want to talk a little about cellular respiration and what I have learned about it. Cellular respiration is series of metabolic processes by which living cells produce energy through the oxidation of organic substances. I wanted to make sure that I wrote down some important information regarding cellular respiration so I took notes. I know that ATP is a common carrier of chemical energy in the cell, and the cellular respiration id the splitting of glucose molecules to transfer energy to ATP. It also has two stages Glycolysis and Aerobic respiration.

During glycolysis small amounts of ATP is produced when glucose is broken down to pyruvate. Pyruvate can go through aerobic respiration (Large amount of ATP) or anaerobic respiration. (Small amounts of ATP) I think that I have a basic understanding of what is going on.

Blog 4: Marking Period

Okay, so I have to write a few more blogs so I don't get a bad grade in this class. I think that I will write a little bit about photosynthesis. So we have learned a great deal about what photosynthesis these last few weeks. The actual definition of photosynthesis is the process in green plants and certain other organisms by which carbohydrates are synthesized from carbon dioxide and water using light as an energy source. Most forms of photosynthesis release oxygen as a byproduct. I learned that chlorophyll a not only produces all the oxygen for the respiration on Earth, but also produces oxygen for the formation of ozone, which protects the planet from dangerous ultraviolet light. Also that the pigments found within photosynthesis are chlorophyll a, chlorophyll b, and carotene.
When we were doing the lab for photosynthesis in class I didn't find it to be that difficult and I believe that I understood the whole process that was going on. I think that the most difficult part of the lab was when I had to find the R value for the solutions. I didn't fully understand what I had to do until Johnson came over and explained it to me. He helped me a lot and I was able to complete the remainder of the calculations on my own.

Blog # 3: For the Second Marking Period

This week was very busy and very short due to the brake that we had on Tuesday. We we came back into school on Wednesday, we had to complete an experiment that would help us understand the topic we were to be learning about in class. My group had to pair up with another group in order to finish the experiment. The experiment had two parts, one way would show us the results of respiration in cold temperatures, and the other experiment would show us the results of respiration in warmer temperatures. My group had to do the experiment dealing with warmer temperatures. What I discovered was that in warmer temperatures the cellular respiration occurs slowly, where as in the cold experiment, it happened much faster. My group and I had to do curtain parts of the experiment over a few times. When we were recorded the data that we obtained, we had to fill in the data a couple of times because we were unsure of what we were doing.

Blog #2: For Second Marking Period

Well this week went by really fast. I was happy that it went back quickly; I really can’t wait until tomorrow. It will be Saturday and I can get some sleep, before getting started on some more work. Well, anyway, today we did an experiment designed to show use the effects of Cellular Respiration. My partners and I started our experiment today. We had these germinated and non-germinated beans, and some beads that we placed into small containers. Then we put a cork on the cover and pored some food coloring into the glass tubing. The question that we tried to answer was, “How does increasing the temperature affect the pressure and the volume of the gas?” My group made some predictions about what would happen in the experiment. We said, “As the temperature increases, the pressure of the gas increases too. The volume will decrease because it allows molecules to vibrate faster, which makes them move at a higher speed.I am looking forward to next week and I hope that I can fix my data charts. See you Monday!!  

Blog #1: For Second Marking Period

Okay, so this is the second marking period. I have to do more blogs and I guess that this will happen be happening all year. So this week was really interesting, we did a few experiments this week that have talked a lot about Osmosis and Diffusion.  We did this experiment that we looked at the way an onion cell looks like under a miroscope. The cells in the onion were all spread out. But, then we put NaCl on the onion this made the cells shrink, they became close together and not so spread out. This lab allowed us to see the effects of osmosis. Another lab that we did was dealing with a few different molars of water. Then we used some tubing to hold the Glucose/Starch solution. Then we placed the tubing into the solutions of water. Over time the water turned an Amber color leaving the solution in the tubing a dark blue/purple color. This reaction made it clear that thought the process of diffusion, the glucose/starch solution transported itself to the water solution that surrounded it. I think that the classes were really cool and they were easier to fallow. I like it when we are given a written out lab. I think that it saves a lot of time. It also allows people to keep all of their notes in one place.

Blog #6

So... today I went to see about my grade in class. I now realize that I should go and ask much sooner than the day before the end of the marking period. I will make a mental note of that. So I found out that I am not doing as well as I would have wanted to. I want to do well in this class I mean I really do, but class is really hard and on top of all of that I have like 4 other AP classes. I wont fail the marking period that is for sure, but lets just say I could do better. AND I WILL!! I just have to work harder. I know that it is only going to get harder and I think that the best thing for me to do would be to drop the class. I still will take Biology, but Regents. I haven't really decided yet. I will have to think about this for a while. I dont know what to do! <3