Successful Blog

This week in AP Biology we redid our lab, and this time it was a success. To prevent the vials from getting water leaked into it, we used super glue instead of petroleum jelly which is what we used at first and that is how the lab failed last week. The purpose of the lab is to get germinated and nongerminated peas and put them in 6 vials with a cotton ball soaked in KOH. The vials 1-3 are placed in a room temperature bath and vials 4-6 are placed in a chilled waterbath. After that is done, you then place the 6 respirometers on each vial and place them in their designated waterbath. With the vials successfully done, we could now get the data we needed. This data was to show the relationship of gas laws to the function of a respirometer and the effect of temperature and germination or nongermination on cell respiration. The germinating peas consumed the most oxygen in both the room temperature waterbath and the chilled waterbath because it performs cellular respiration while the others do not. The lab seems fairly simple, but it is a very tedious process. 

Unsuccessful Week

This week in AP Biology, our class attempted to do a lab about cellular respiration. There are previous blogs that  explains cellular respiration and the steps that occur. This lab turned out to be a complete fail. I was not able to see the start of the lab because of an extracurricular activity, so I can't really explain the whole process, but the purpose of the lab is to demonstrate the relationship of gas laws, the effect of temperature and germination or nongermination on cell respiration, and the relationship between dependent and independent values. Like I said, I was not in class during the start of the lab, so I will not know as much or be able to explain it very well. However, the purpose of the lab is to get germinated and nongerminated peas and put them in 6 vials which has a cotton soaked with KOH. 1-3 is placed in a room temperature bath and 4-6 is placed in a chilled waterbath. After that, you place 6 respirometers  in the waterbaths, but our respirometers got water leaked inside, so it ruined the lab. If the respirometers did not get water inside, then we would have to record the volume.

3 Steps Of Cellular Respiration

This week in AP Biology we continued discussing cellular respiration once again. Since we have a quiz this week, we just reviewed about cellular respiration and the three steps of cellular respiration. These three steps are glycolysis, Kreb's Cycle ( citric acid cycle) and Electron Transport Chain (ETC). Each step works differently, but they each produce energy in the form of ATP. Glycolysis occurs outside the mitochindria and it breaks down glucose into two molecules called a pyruvate and also produces 2 ATP's and 2 NADH molecules.  The Kreb;s Cycle, which is also known as the citric acid cycle. The Kreb;s cycle occurs in the mitochondria where the pyruvates are transported and loses carbon dioxide to form acetyl CoA and later makes 2 ATP's, NADH and FADH. And finally ETC (also known as Oxidative Phosphorylation) also occurs in the mitochondria and it releases a large amount of chemical energy to produce about 34 ATP's. These are the three steps of cellular respiration.

Cellular Respiration

This week in AP Biology we talked about cellular respiration. Cellular respiration is the metabolic process whereby certain organisms obtain energy from organic molecules. Without cellular respiration, no organism would be able to acquire energy. Another thing we discussed in class was aerobic and anaerobic respiration. Aerobic uses oxygen while anaerobic does not use oxygen. Also anaerobic produces lactic acid while aerobic does not. Lactic acid is produced in the muscle tissues during an intense exercise. That is why when someone gets done with a difficult workout they pant for oxygen because your body is getting all of the lactic acid out and taking oxygen in. There are three steps in cellular respiration, and they are glycolisis, Kreb's cycle, and Electron Transport Chain (ETC). Each one of these steps build up on each other to make several ATP's. (I don't know the cycle very well enough as of now to explain it very thoroughly). Cellular respiration is very important to any organism because we need energy to make our body work properly.