Friday, January 25, 2013

Science Club visits Crestwood School!

Mrs. Block's Advanced Chemistry classes travelled with Mrs. Wilson's Biotechnology and Anatomy students to Crestwood School last week to work with 5th graders just finishing a Genetics Unit.  Three classrooms were set up involving three activities as the 55 young scientists rotated through. The PCHS high school students worked one-on-one in a strawberry DNA extraction lab, a fingerprint analysis activity, and the creation of an imaginary creature using chromosomes.



 
Aaron Garver develops fingerprinting with a Crestwood student.
 

Hudson and Trystan extract DNA from strawberries.
 


Students are assigned chromosomes to create a "reebop" creature.
 


Students learn the difference between phenotype and genotype.
 

 
Katie Korte and Pia Twigg begin the DNA extraction process.
 


Kahrissa Higginbotham explains the loop, arch, and whorl or fingerprinting.

 
More Reebops!
 

 
Mitchell extracts the strawberry DNA.







 

Tuesday, January 15, 2013

Three-Layer Density Column Lab



CONGRATULATIONS to:Christen Swan of 7th hour had the winning column!
 
 
Chemistry I class created a three-layer density column in a test tube past week using water, food coloring, and/or sugar and salt.  They learned how to manipulate the density of each layer by changing the mass, volume, or temperature of each solution.  Of the 80 columns created, winners were picked to represent each hour and an overall winner was crowned!  Here are some of the runners-up:
 
 
 
3rd hour:  winner Brianna Blair with Kaitlin Neibarger and Samantha Abshier
6th hour:  winner Jake Meister with Janessa Watson and Lauren Swinford
7th hour:  OVERALLWINNER Christen Swan with Payton Stewart
8th hour:  winner Josy Sudduth with Alejandro Torres and Libby Lawson