Gibbs Free Enegy

This week in AP Biology we talked about Gibbs Free Energy. Gibbs Free Energy is a bit confusing, but after a while you start getting the hang of it (I don't know it well enough to explain it very well). Free Energy is very important in the universe. Without Free Energy, then nothing would be the same and our body wouldn't be able to function as quickly as it does now. Another thing we talked about in class is enzymes. Enzymes are simply proteins that speed up reactions. If we didn't have enzymes then it would take years and years and years to even digest the simplest things. Another thing we talked about is metabolism. A metabolism is the chemical processes that occur within a living organism in order to maintain life. Without any of these things, our body would not be able to function as well as it does now.



 

Osmosis & Diffusion

This week in AP Biology we didn't really discuss about much because of a lab we are doing in class(which we still haven't completed), so we pretty much reviewed what we learned last week. But most parts in the lab is about osmosis and diffusion, which is something we talked about last week. Osmosis is the movement of water in a cell and diffusion is the movement between other materials in a cell. Without osmosis or diffusion, our body would not be able to transport all of the nutrients from the food we eat and drink.Both osmosis and diffusion have similarities and differences. For example diffusion occurs in a gaseous state while osmosis does not and diffusion moves from high to low and osmosis is vice versa. Like I said, we didn't discuss about a whole this week because of an important lab, but either way it was still interesting to talk about osmosis and diffusion in detail again.

Plasma Membrane

 This week in AP Biology, we talked about the plasma membrane, what its job is,things that happen within the membrane, and the parts of the membrane. The plasma membrane is composed up of a phosolipid bi-layer and it is the boundary of a cells between life and non life. It is also amphipathic, which means that it is both hydrophilic and hydrophobic. We also talked about endocytosis and exocytosis. Endocytosis is when materials move into the cell and exocytosis is when materials are moved out of the cell. Another thing we discussed in class was diffusion and osmosis. Diffusion is just transporting materials into the cell and osmosis is transporting water into the cell. Also Also another thing that deals with osmosis is hypertonic, hypotonic, and isotonic solutions. Which just means the amount of water and the amount of concentration. Hypotonic is when there is more solute than solvent, hypertonic is when there is more solvent then solute, and isotonic is when they are both equal. As you can see we discussed about several things this week and it was all really interesting.




Plasma Membrane:



Hypertonic, Hypotonic, Isotonic:

Prokaryotes VS Eukaryotes

This week in AP Biology we didn't really learn anything new. We simply just reviewed over the cell for our quiz. We talked about the differences between a eukaryote and a prokaryote and also what they either share in common or what they lack in common. The most obvious reason is that prokaryotes do not have a nucleus and eurakyotes do. Another differences is that prokaryotes are obviously smaller and they also have a different structure. The only two things they have in common is that they both have vesicles and vacuoles. Bacteria and Archea are prokaryotes because they do not have a nucleus and eurakyotes are animals and plants because they do have a nucleus. Scientist believe that some prokaryotes were ingested by eukaryotes. The evidence they have is that the mitochondria was once a prokaryote and it is now present in a eukaryote. Like I said before, we did not really talk about anything new because we were mainly focusing on reviewing for our quiz. To show you more differences between prokaryotes and eukaryotes, here is a picture to show you: