Blog of 11/11/10

Today in science, I just learned about the way different atoms of different elements react when they are heated, cooled, or when there is pressure added to the container they are in. I tested all of this in a simulation where there is a container, and you can choose different elements. You can see the inside of the container, so you can see how the particles react to the different environments they are in.

Blog for 3/5

Something I could tell my future self is about co- dominance and incomplete dominance. Co-dominance is when both alleles have the same amount of dominance, and so, in the end, the both alleles show up. For example, if the alleles were for hair color, and there was yellow and blue, and they were co-dominant, the hair color would be yellow and blue. Incomplete dominance is when the allele isn't dominant all the way, so as a result, the alleles mix together. For example, using the info from the example before, if you had yellow and blue hair color alleles, and they were both incompletely dominant, the colors would mix and then turn green. You would have green hair if that were to happen.

Blog for 1/29/10

Dear Marika

The difference between mitosis and meiosis is that meiosis makes sperm cells and egg cells. Mitosis creates normal cells, like skin cells and cheek cells. They are non-sex related cells. In mitosis, you make only 2 cells, when meiosis makes 4. They all have different chromosomes. They have one kind from mom, and another from dad.

Blog for 1/25

This week, we started meiosis. Meiosis is very close to mitosos, but is very diffrent in many ways. In meiosis, you create sperm cells or egg cells. Also, the DNA in each cell meiosis makes is diffrent. The ending number of cells in meiosis is 4, unlike mitosis which ends up with only 2. Each cell made during meiosis has half the number of chromosomes as cells made during mitosis. That is because sperm cells would connect with another cell with half the number of chromosomes, from the female, and together, that would make 100% chromosomes. Mitosis creates 2 exactly the same cells. Mitosis create cells for the reason of just division, not anything to do with sex.

Blog for 1/19/10

This week, I learned a lot about mitosis and the different steps of it. A step before mitosis even begins is interphase. This phase is when the cell is normal and the DNA is still spread out. When did an activity online with the whole class, we summarized that in a whole cell, most of the cells are in the process of interphase. As an experiment, we looked at onion ring cells which had been preserved to look just as they had when they were alive. When we looked at these cells under a microscope in high power, you could see the DNA, and tell which phase it was probably in. The ones with only 1 small dot meant that the cell was in the phase of interphase. The ones with many small squiggles and looked as though they didn't want to be separated were in the phase of metaphase. We also learned about the differences between chromatids, chromosomes, and chromatin. Chromatid is the unraveled DNA. A chromosome is a single strand of a chromatin. A chromatin is in the shape of an X and is connected with a small thing called a kineticore.