Wednesday, August 28, 2013

Honors Biology Class 2.

Today in class we went over Mr. Quicks grading policy and reviewed class expectations. After the lecture we were given the choice of doing two or one worksheets. However, the one worksheet was time-consuming so I chose to do the first option. The worksheets were based mostly on chemistry review: bonding, protons, electrons, valence electrons, and charges. Afterwards we took and oral quiz and then a written quiz that we were not required to turn in.

Sunday, August 25, 2013

Hon. Bio. class 1

Today in class we experimented with varied types of milk, dish soap, and food coloring. We were first asked to draw out a hypothesis, and this is what my partner an I wrote:
Here it depicts the fat molecule getting dissolved by the dish soap after it has been added to the mixture, causing the food coloring to swirl. Afterwards, we desinged an experiment to prove or disprove our hypothesis. We chose to use four different kinds of milk: skim, whole, 2%, and soy, and decided to keep the dish soap as the independent variable. this is some of what occured:

 
 
After the experiment, we realized that our hypothesis was wrong because the reaction was strong even within the soy milk.

 
What we concluded was that the dish soap acted as a surfectant and broke down the surface tension of the milk which also allowed it to break down the bonds of water. As the bonds broke the food coloring swirled around and illustrated the process.