Honey Bee Project:
Project Reflection:
Honey bees are important because they pollinate the world. They pollinate flowers to make the world a more beautiful place to live and they pollinate plants for us to eat. If bees stopped pollinating we would have no apples or almonds anymore because they are mostly pollinated by honey bees. We need to be concerned about the honey bees because we do not want to have to start making all manufactured food. We need to be concerned about the bees because they affect us in a tremendous way. Bees are so important to the environment and if do not try to protect them we will all die.
I chose to focus on the Varroa mites and how you can protect your hives from the infestation of the mites. I learned that the mites can be killed with chemicals that don’t kill the bees but there isn't really a way to kill them without using chemicals on your hive. You can detect the mites with a powdered sugar coating on your bees but that only shows the mites, it doesn't kill them. For exhibition I presented an info-graphic about the way to detect varroa mites by using powdered sugar and then a way to kill the mites if you have found that you have them in your hives. I was most proud of my work to create an info-graphic even when I had never heard of that thing before and I was proud of myself to ask peers to help me and then I created an info-graphic that I was happy of and I thought it was beautiful work. I do wish that I have researched some different ways to kill the varroa mites without chemicals just to see if it was possible but I didn't dig that deep and I wish I had.
I chose to focus on the Varroa mites and how you can protect your hives from the infestation of the mites. I learned that the mites can be killed with chemicals that don’t kill the bees but there isn't really a way to kill them without using chemicals on your hive. You can detect the mites with a powdered sugar coating on your bees but that only shows the mites, it doesn't kill them. For exhibition I presented an info-graphic about the way to detect varroa mites by using powdered sugar and then a way to kill the mites if you have found that you have them in your hives. I was most proud of my work to create an info-graphic even when I had never heard of that thing before and I was proud of myself to ask peers to help me and then I created an info-graphic that I was happy of and I thought it was beautiful work. I do wish that I have researched some different ways to kill the varroa mites without chemicals just to see if it was possible but I didn't dig that deep and I wish I had.
Do not have research notes due to technical difficulties, sorry for the inconvenience.
Dissection Project:
Project Reflection:
I chose a shark because they are much different than the human and I found that interesting. I wanted to do something different from how we work and the pig was very similar. I could never dissect a cat because I own too many cats and for me personally that was just too sad to do. I learned the things I really wanted to learn such as about how they breath under water and how they breathe. I learned about why they have big livers and how they stay balanced when they swim. I learned about how some sharks cannot stop swimming because they do not have any way to breathe so the have to keep swimming to the water is pushing oxygen through them. During dissections I learned that I do not have as strong of a stomach as I thought I did and that now any time I think about dissections I start to smell fish smell and it is disturbing. I learned that if I were going to do them again I would NOT choose the shark or the cat or the pig... I don't think I would ever do it again
Crime Scene Investigation Project:
Project Reflection:
This project was all about learning how DNA and other important forensics used in a crime can help a huge amount of wrongfully convicted people to be exonerated. We started off learning about exoneration which is when a person is convicted of a crime they didn't commit and later let go free and that is mostly because of DNA evidence. After having a guest speaker, Ken Marsh come talk to us about him being exonerated, we started working on our crime scenes. We worked in partners and sometimes in small groups to solve the crime the best we could. We did many different labs in order for us to do this. We learned about PCR, which is when you take a small amount of DNA and multiply it by millions to create more of the same DNA. We did an electrophoresis lab along with a superglue fuming lab.
With our crime scene, when we started working on it, it looked like the victim committed suicide, but as we looked at the blood spatter and trajectory of the bullet, it no longer seemed to be suicide. The blood spatter did not match up to where the gun was found by the victims body. The trajectory of the bullet made it clear that the victim was slouched over when he was shot, therefor he could not have shot himself. After collecting the evidence and doing the superglue fuming we found out that the victims wife’s prints were on the Oxycontin bottle which we had an excessive amount of in his system which we found during the autopsy.
The most interesting forensic science we learned about I thought was the DNA extraction because it was easy to do but was so useful at the same time. It was super interesting to visually see the DNA separating. I think I did well with taking in information and completing the labs and understanding how the labs were done and why they were important. I wish I could have done better on my evidence reports because I have a hard time writing facts without plagiarizing what other people wrote about the facts I needed.
With our crime scene, when we started working on it, it looked like the victim committed suicide, but as we looked at the blood spatter and trajectory of the bullet, it no longer seemed to be suicide. The blood spatter did not match up to where the gun was found by the victims body. The trajectory of the bullet made it clear that the victim was slouched over when he was shot, therefor he could not have shot himself. After collecting the evidence and doing the superglue fuming we found out that the victims wife’s prints were on the Oxycontin bottle which we had an excessive amount of in his system which we found during the autopsy.
The most interesting forensic science we learned about I thought was the DNA extraction because it was easy to do but was so useful at the same time. It was super interesting to visually see the DNA separating. I think I did well with taking in information and completing the labs and understanding how the labs were done and why they were important. I wish I could have done better on my evidence reports because I have a hard time writing facts without plagiarizing what other people wrote about the facts I needed.