Generating Questions

Generating Questions

“Why do we dream?” This is the question that reached out to me first, and really caught my eye. This is because dreaming is something I don’t do anymore. I stopped dreaming when i was asleep since middle school, but every few months I’ll get a dream. Dreaming is something that I don’t remember much of.

A possible hypothesis for this question could be: “If we dream, then we dream about what we fear the most.” This would be represented as a “nightmare”, because maybe a little kid would dream about monsters, or an adult would dream about going bankrupt.

1. Why does everything that exists exist?
2. Why can humans not see in the 4th or 5th dimension?
3. Why is technology so complex?
4. Why can some people work like machines, while some people can’t even focus on a single task?
5. How does “learning” actually happen in our heads?
6. Why have humans come up with a look for pretty and a look for ugly? Why can we distinguish what is pretty and what isn’t?
7. Why have our noses been able to detect things as good-smelling or bad-smelling?
8. Why can we decide what tastes good and what doesn’t?
9. Why can we hear songs that sound good or why do we hear songs that sound bad? How do we interpret these things?
10. Why do humans “age”?
11. What is the meaning of life?
12. Why do humans have interests in certain things?
13. Why did humans evolve?
14. How did someone come up with the idea of having a spoken language that doesn’t sound like monkeys fighting?
15. Why are certain things associated to certain things such as bananas with monkeys?
16. What would the world be like without money?
17. What would the world be like if there were still empires and city-states?
18. What would the world be like without technology?
19. How did music come to be?
20. Why do humans have the urge to steal or the wanting to break laws?

Identifying Questions and Hypotheses

What Doesn't Kill You Really Does Make You Weaker

                The scientific study that I found contradicts the statement by Friedrich Nietzsche. A bunch of studies were done by Noam Shpancer, and he had a question: "Does what doesn't kill you really make you stronger?" He followed that up with a hypothesis of "What doesn't kill you makes you weaker." "And this is true for humans as well. Mayhem and chaos don't toughen you up, and they don't prepare you well to deal with the terror of this world." Noam Shpancer says. "Tender love and care toughen you up, because they nurture and strengthen your capacity to learn and adapt, including learning how to fight, and adapting to later hardship." If there was a person growing up in a neighborhood where crime and violence was common, and this person happened to be involved a few times, this person would not be stronger than before, just because this person survived.
               

https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/insight-therapy/201008/what-doesnt-kill-you-makes-you-weaker

Unit 2 Reflection

Unit 2 Reflection

Unit 2 was about macromolecules, subatomic particles, elements, and chemical reactions. The macromolecules are lipids, carbohydrates, nucleic acids, and proteins. The subatomic particles of atoms are protons which are positively charged, electrons which are negatively charged, and neutrons which are neutral. Elements are the most basic form of something; unable to be divided further.

Macromolecules have four subcategories, lipids, carbohydrates, nucleic acids, and proteins. Where are lipids found? What are they? Lipids are found all over the body and are somewhat of a fat; they store fat for later usage. But what are these carbohydrates that everyone is trying to lose? These are fat cells, and the nemesis of all weight losers. Food contains carbohydrates, which is why weight losers try to cut weight by cutting food intake. Nucleic acids and proteins work hand in hand. When a human consumes proteins, they are broken down into nucleic acids. Nucleic acids are the building blocks of protein, so they reassemble to create a different protein that the human can use. The picture shown below is wheat and bread, which are both carbohydrates. Example of lipids would be wax and oils.

Subatomic particles fall toward the chemistry side of biology. They are protons which are positively charged, electrons which are negatively charged, and neutrons which are neutral. Why does this matter to biologists? That is because bonds do. Bonds involve electrons, which are shared between atoms in covalent bonds. In ionic bonds, this isn’t so fair. One atom will gain electrons, while the other one loses electrons. They don’t share; one gives one takes. In this sense, subatomic particles are “bonded” with biologists! What is the difference between these subatomic particles besides charge? Size. Protons and neutrons are absolute giants compared to electrons. Electrons are so small that they don’t even contribute to atomic weight. Atomic weight is used to describe elements, which are the most basic form of a molecule; they cannot be divided further. The picture shown below is a basic atom, showing the location of each subatomic particle.

Chemical reactions involve the interaction of two or more elements. This will result in a product, something different from what the substrate was. The substrate is the “input” and the product is the “output”. There are helpful molecules called enzymes that speed up the reaction. They speed up the reaction by lowering activation energy. Activation energy is the amount of energy that is required to initiate the reaction. For example, the picture shown below is a neutralization reaction. This is a reaction that cancels the pH of HCL, a strong acid, and NaOH, a strong base. Those two were the substrates, leaving salt and water as the product.

Cheese Lab Conclusion

C.E.R

In this lab we asked the question: “What are the optimal conditions and curdling agents for making cheese?” Our claim was: “If the cow’s stomach where rennin is found naturally is hot, then the optimal temperature for curdling cheese is hot as well.” We found that our hypothesis was correct, because after multiple experiments, the coldest temperature didn’t even curdle, the warm temperature somewhat curdled after 10 minutes, but the hot temperature curdled completely in 5 minutes. It is general knowledge that a cow’s stomach is hot, so we were able to assume that the best conditions for curdling cheese were hot temperatures as well. This data supports our claim because the hot bath simulated the cow’s stomach most accurately out of the rest of our variables.

P.E

Our data agrees with the expected results because we were expecting the hot temperature to curdle the milk the fastest. There were possible errors in our measurements because we could have miscalculated the amount of time that each test tube sat in their environments. We checked every 5 minutes, so the exact amount of time each sample took to curdle might have been different. This could result in inaccurate time measurements. Another problem we might have  with our results is the amount of rennin put into each sample. There was a set amount  we were supposed to put in, but there is a small possibility there was an uneven amount of rennin in each sample. We could have been more observant, checking every minute instead of every 5 minutes for curdling. This could have resulted in more accurate results. We could have been more careful when measuring rennin into each sample, and in future experiments we should watch out for measuring things more accurately.

P.A

This lab was done to demonstrate the role that enzymes play in chemical reactions, and to explain denaturing. There was proof that the enzymes assisting in the curdling process were denaturing in the cold temperature, because there were absolutely no curdles. in the hot temperature, the enzymes seemed to work the best and stay "natured", because the milk curdled the fastest. From this lab I learned the importance of enzymes in reactions. This helps me understand the concept of denaturing more. Based on my experience from this lab, I learned why denaturing is not something to be taken lightly, and why denaturing is such a drastic problem in nature.

	Time to Curdle (minutes)
Curdling Agent	Chymosin	Rennin	Buttermilk	Milk(control)
Acid	5	5	5
Base	20
pH control	15	10
Cold
Hot	5	5
temp control	10	10

Sweetness Lab

C.E.R

In this lab, we asked the question: “How does the structure of a carbohydrate affect its taste(sweetness)?” Our claim was: “If lactose is a disaccharide made of glucose and galactose, then it will taste sweet.” We assumed that lactose, being made up of glucose and galactose, was going to be the sweetest. On a scale of 0-200, Sucrose was an independent variable at 100. This set the example for everything else, and when we tested the Lactose we decided that Lactose had no taste, as if it never entered your mouth. Since lactose was tasteless, after we conducted our experiment we ended up being wrong.

1. Monosaccharides and disaccharides were the sweetest while the polysaccharides had nearly no taste.
2. The structure can change the way that organisms can connect with the carbohydrate, and can affect the overall usage of the carbohydrate by the organism.
3. No, each tester did not give the same rating for each sample.

1) Each tester has different taste buds, and therefore has a different rating for each carbohydrate.

2) Each tester has a different scale on which they rate the taste of a carbohydrate, so even if one tester feels the same taste as the other tester they may still rate it differently.

3) The amount of carbohydrate that each tester consumed was different as well, so that can affect the taste that each one experienced.

 4. The emotions that are associated with the food we consume, and the texture, feel, and softness of the food we consume cause humans to taste “sweetness”.

Carbohydrate	Type of Carbohydrate	Degree of Sweetness	Color	Texture	Other Observations/Connections to Food
Sucrose	Disaccharide	100	white	granular	fruits
Glucose	monosaccharide	25	white	soft, almost no texture	fruits/ sugars
Fructose	monosaccharide	150	translucent white	grainy	bread, corn syrup, high fructose corn syrup
Galactose	monosaccharide	25	pearl white	powdery	dairy products
Maltose	disaccharide	10	yellow(sandy)	clumped up/soft	Grain for Beer
Lactose	disaccharide	0	white	soft, weightless	milk
Starch	polysaccharide	0	white	soft/weightless	bread
Cellulose	polysaccharide	0	white	soft/ weightless	celery

Question 4 link: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmedhealth/PMH0072592/

Biology Collage