Characteristics of life lab day 1

We started into our first set of labs for the year.  We will be looking at a couple different characteristics of life in organisms other than ourselves.  We started with these daily questions though:

To hear the discussion that went along with these daily questions - view the screen cast below:

Then we set up a couple different labs.  Here are some pictures and descriptions of what we were doing:

Lab set up for the day!!

We took our living organisms (in this case yeast) and attempted to see if we could capture metabolism!

You added Sugar to the Yeast (Gave it some food!!)

I added a about 15mL of warm water and you guys shook the bejeebers out of it.

We put a balloon over the top
to catch all the "yeast farts"

And Immediately started to see
some action!!!

After a little bit of time we can already see how much gas is being captured!!!

Next up was to see growth and reproduction.  I mentioned to you guys about how much bacteria is in/on/around us.  MOST of this bacteria is harmless and often times NECESSARY for us.  To observe reproduction in action we need to use an organism that can reproduce very quickly.  Bacteria, if given the right environment, can reproduce themselves every 20 minutes.  Here are some pics as to what you did to set up this portion of the lab..

You chose different areas/objects to swab for bacteria.  Many of you were VERY creative in doing this!!!

You then transferred that bacteria to an agar plate that has lots of food for the bacteria to grow....

More plating of bacteria

Then I took a "before" pic of all your plates, placed them into an incubator that is at body temperature and we will see tomorrow what we have grown!!!!