Photosynthesis and Cellular Respiration Foldable

Photosynthesis and Cellular Respiration
Side by Side Foldable cover

If it is one thing I want my biology students to remember when they leave my class is to understand the interconnectedness of the two major energy systems in living organisms - photosynthesis and cellular respiration. This is the circle of life (imagine the theme song from The Lion King playing here).

For this foldable, take a sheet of paper, fold almost in half in order to allow a little overhang to serve as the folding closure. Cut down the middle to form the two half flaps.

I have also done this assignment in interactive notebooks.

Inside of Foldable 

As you can see, they used their textbooks to draw the diagrams of the chloroplast and mitochondria including all labels. Inside they diagramed the Light Dependent and Light Independent processes of photosynthesis and the three stages of respiration - glycolysis, Krebs (Citric Acid) cycle, and electron transport chain. The last diagram is essentially the carbon cycle showing how plants (which carry out both functions) and animals are related. Plants capture energy from the sun in order to make ATP which provides the energy for the chemical reactions converting carbon dioxide and water into sugars. The plants can then use those sugars (more importantly for us humans who eat the plants) to carry out cellular respiration to make ATP to provide the energy for all of life's processes - growth, reproduction, movement, etc.

"And yes, I want you to use color!" - answer to most commonly asked student question

Density Column Lab

Egg Drop Density Column Lab

It was midterm season once again and I was looking for a new lab for my Chemistry students to complete for their practical portion of the exam. I went hunting for a lab that would incorporate prior knowledge and showcase the student's ability to follow a lab procedure with little to no instruction from me, utilize the measuring skills that we have worked on all semester, demonstrate their understanding of laboratory safety rules, and to work independently. I found the answer in The Egg Drop Lab.

Because of time constraints (a two hour exam period that included a written portion) I set up the lab stations to include four liquid samples (I chose dark corn syrup, dishwashing liquid, vegetable oil, and rubbing alcohol into which I added blue food coloring) in graduated cylinders and indicated the empty mass of the glassware. I randomly filled the cylinders with differing volumes and the students had to calculate the density and predict what would happen if they added the four liquids to a test tube. Then they built a column to test their predictions. The lab procedure then asks them to predict where in the column water would settle and then to test that prediction. The next step was to determine the density of an egg and predict where in a column it would end up when dropped in. To minimize the amount of material used, I built the column using the student's input. The results are shown here. In addition I colored water with red food color and added it to the column before dropping in the egg.

What was really nice about this lab is the author designed this for an Earth Science course so it was an opportunity for me to have my students see the connection between what they have learned in Chemistry as it applies to the other sciences.