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start with one word, and let it reproduce and mutate and interact to form sentences, eventually stories...
dog:
bog cog fog hog jog log dig dug dong do doc doe doo dot doge dogs
use a computer program with spell-check dictionary
combinations:
dog jog. hog jog. bog log. dog dig. hog dig. dog dug. hog dug. dog dong. hog dong. dig bog. dug bog. doc dong. doe dig. dog doo. hog doo. doc jog. doge dong. dog dig log. dog dug log. do dog dig. dig dog doo. do dogs dig. do dogs dig log.
now keep only the words that can interact in sentences:
dog bog hog jog log dig dug dong do doc doe doo doge
mutate them:
hag hug ho hob hoe hoo hop hot how hoy hogs
ajog jo job joe jot joy jogs
blog clog flog slog long lo lob lol lop lot low logs etc...
more combinations:
hog hag. dog hug. dog hop. do dog hop. how do dog hop. how do dogs dig logs. do dogs hug hot docs. how long do dogs dig. do long logs clog bogs. etc....
now if you introduce some geography to all these sentences so that they only join with neighbors. the words themselves are reproduced out of sentences...
now of course the ecological possibilities are fixed from MY understanding of language and imagination. in real biological evolution, you got some fixed ecology given by geology, physics, chemistry, geometry... but the new critters themselves also create new ecological possibilities.
well, in my system the evolution of the words "how" and "do" did the same thing.
I'll never evolve the word "doggy" because "dogg" cant evolve. but now if I allow mutations in SENTENCES, in particular insertions and deletions, I could get: "dog go", and if I allow rare double mutations, a deletion and a mutation can give me "doggy".
here is a toy biology that I thoroughly understand and can play with to get insight into all the quirky details that are possible in this biological evolution game.
Bar, you can make this a game people play! MUCH more interesting than scrabble!
Friday, April 24, 2009
Thursday, April 23, 2009
47) Simplest Organic Redox Cycle
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Harold J. Morowitz mentions a simple system of redox cycles of CO2 +H2O yielding formaldehyde and O2 and back again catalyzed by Fe2+/3+ under sunlight/shade, can we do that lab? how would we detect it's working? I suppose the BZ reaction is already more complex and it has a visual indicator!
If I have a vat of water (with CO2 dissolved in it ) over some catalyst, such as Fe++ ions, spread on the bottom, and I let high energy light (like ultraviolet) strike the catalyst on one side and leave the other side in the dark, we get something like Benard convection. On the lit side we get CO2 + H2O yielding higher energy molecules: CH2O + O2, these will diffuse to the dark side and oxidize back to CO2 and H2O, and as the catalyst on the light side use up all the CO2 there, the CO2 from the dark side will diffuse back to the light side, forming a cycle. This is theoretical, I haven't done it, or seen a physical description of it. The BZ reaction, however, under similar non equilibrium conditions does produce spiral wave patterns. These patterns from above might look stationary but they are made out of migrating molecules, so they are a different sort than patterns in crystals and snowflakes.
Notice that we need a hot side AND a cold side. If i we shone the UV light on the whole vat of water, and insulated the vat so that no heat was able to escape, the molecules would just build up more and more complicated gunk as the temperature rose, and then as the temperature rises even higher they would eventually come apart until the whole setup would be as hot as the UV source and it would consist of a random plasma of atomic ions. NO PATTERN, gotta have the hot and cold.
can I do a reaction like this?
Harold J. Morowitz mentions a simple system of redox cycles of CO2 +H2O yielding formaldehyde and O2 and back again catalyzed by Fe2+/3+ under sunlight/shade, can we do that lab? how would we detect it's working? I suppose the BZ reaction is already more complex and it has a visual indicator!
If I have a vat of water (with CO2 dissolved in it ) over some catalyst, such as Fe++ ions, spread on the bottom, and I let high energy light (like ultraviolet) strike the catalyst on one side and leave the other side in the dark, we get something like Benard convection. On the lit side we get CO2 + H2O yielding higher energy molecules: CH2O + O2, these will diffuse to the dark side and oxidize back to CO2 and H2O, and as the catalyst on the light side use up all the CO2 there, the CO2 from the dark side will diffuse back to the light side, forming a cycle. This is theoretical, I haven't done it, or seen a physical description of it. The BZ reaction, however, under similar non equilibrium conditions does produce spiral wave patterns. These patterns from above might look stationary but they are made out of migrating molecules, so they are a different sort than patterns in crystals and snowflakes.
Notice that we need a hot side AND a cold side. If i we shone the UV light on the whole vat of water, and insulated the vat so that no heat was able to escape, the molecules would just build up more and more complicated gunk as the temperature rose, and then as the temperature rises even higher they would eventually come apart until the whole setup would be as hot as the UV source and it would consist of a random plasma of atomic ions. NO PATTERN, gotta have the hot and cold.
can I do a reaction like this?
From Convection On Spinning Surfaces To Complex Weather Patterns On Earth and Jupiter
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35) Taylor Cuette Vortices Between Two Spinning Surfaces
The next spin we can introduce to the story IS spinning. If you put a rotating cylinder inside another rotating cylinder and fill the space between them with fluid a similar thing happens. As you increase the relative speeds various discrete numbers of fluid rolls form:
Pictures here:
http://www.intothecool.com/physics.php
36) Combine Convection With A Spinning Earth And We Get Our Atmospheric Circulation Patterns
When you combine convection on the surface of the Earth under sunlight with the fact that the Earth spins (Coriolis effect) the convection breaks up into a curious pattern of cells which dominate world weather patterns.
37) Storm Cells
Add the complication of the fact that when you cool moist air it breaks up into DISCRETE tiny droplets of water or ice, which then fall... you get distinct creatures which can last for many days called storm cells, hurricanes and tiny tornadoes.
Pictures of diagrams of storm cells
http://australiasevereweather.com/photography/photos/2003/0330de29.jpg?
http://hurricanetrackinfo.com/hurricane%20tracking%202.jpg
http://www.qc.ec.gc.ca/meteo/images/Fig_13-10.jpg
http://www.britannica.com/thunderstorms_tornadoes/ocliwea114a4.html
38) Vortex Streets
Lab with fluids or smoke to show the formation of discrete vortices in turbulent fluid flow!
39) Weather On Jupiter
Increase the speed of rotation of our spinning sphere and the weather goes wild: Jupiter
Pictures of discrete cells on Jupiter.
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/images/jupiter/jupiter-v1_640x542.jpg
http://www.gearthblog.com/images/images2006/jupiter.jpg
The great red spot of Jupiter is one of many storm cells. Some last for years, the red spot has so far lasted a couple hundred years at least. (actually I'm combobulating three kinds of structures here: the Taylor vortices, the Benard cells, the complex thing a terrestrial storm cell is, and turbulence vortices. (hah! are there distinct types here? do they all blend? ) ) not 100% sure which the red spot is, or maybe a combination.. Already there is much complication before we even get to biological evolution!
35) Taylor Cuette Vortices Between Two Spinning Surfaces
The next spin we can introduce to the story IS spinning. If you put a rotating cylinder inside another rotating cylinder and fill the space between them with fluid a similar thing happens. As you increase the relative speeds various discrete numbers of fluid rolls form:
Pictures here:
http://www.intothecool.com/physics.php
36) Combine Convection With A Spinning Earth And We Get Our Atmospheric Circulation Patterns
When you combine convection on the surface of the Earth under sunlight with the fact that the Earth spins (Coriolis effect) the convection breaks up into a curious pattern of cells which dominate world weather patterns.
37) Storm Cells
Add the complication of the fact that when you cool moist air it breaks up into DISCRETE tiny droplets of water or ice, which then fall... you get distinct creatures which can last for many days called storm cells, hurricanes and tiny tornadoes.
Pictures of diagrams of storm cells
http://australiasevereweather.com/photography/photos/2003/0330de29.jpg?
http://hurricanetrackinfo.com/hurricane%20tracking%202.jpg
http://www.qc.ec.gc.ca/meteo/images/Fig_13-10.jpg
http://www.britannica.com/thunderstorms_tornadoes/ocliwea114a4.html
38) Vortex Streets
Lab with fluids or smoke to show the formation of discrete vortices in turbulent fluid flow!
39) Weather On Jupiter
Increase the speed of rotation of our spinning sphere and the weather goes wild: Jupiter
Pictures of discrete cells on Jupiter.
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/images/jupiter/jupiter-v1_640x542.jpg
http://www.gearthblog.com/images/images2006/jupiter.jpg
The great red spot of Jupiter is one of many storm cells. Some last for years, the red spot has so far lasted a couple hundred years at least. (actually I'm combobulating three kinds of structures here: the Taylor vortices, the Benard cells, the complex thing a terrestrial storm cell is, and turbulence vortices. (hah! are there distinct types here? do they all blend? ) ) not 100% sure which the red spot is, or maybe a combination.. Already there is much complication before we even get to biological evolution!
34) Benard Convection
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Materials: shallow petri dish, some fluid either water with sparkles in it? or a higher viscosity fluid? some way to heat it from below uniformly. A way to heat it from above also, perhaps blow dryer. thermometer, maybe curious lighting techniques?
Method: watch water heat up, heat quickly to boil, seems to be chaos. Now heat more slowly and find temperature at which convection cells form. may have to experiment with depth of water. Now take temperature of bottom surface and air above water. now try the experiment again but this time heating both the bottom and heating the air above, do we get convection cells?
Discussion
If you heat a shallow layer of water in a pan, at a low temperature you get random motions in the water molecules as they carry the heat (molecular motion) from the high temperature bottom of the pan to the low temperature surface of the water. On a macro scale what you begin to see is that the layer of water directly above the pan expands (gets warmer) and thus less dense than the layer above it and rises. This rising layer breaks up into blobs randomly. Of course if blobs are rising, blobs of water at the top must sink because they are more dense (cooler). Already the fact that these homogenous layers break up into blobs is curious math. In fact, i'm not sure we fully understand it (lookup studies of water droplets and splashes, very complex!). The breaking up of the top layer into blobs as they descend, i think is mediated in a complex way by the surface tension of the water at the top. (surface tension is the stuff that makes water creep up the edges of a container of water a millimeter or so, called the meniscus.)
As you raise the temperature of the bottom of the pan relative to the top of the water you get more random motion. at a certain temperature difference, though, these rising and falling blobs eventually arrange themselves (surprise!) into a fairly neat hexagonal array of convection cells. Warm water rises in the center of each cell and falls at the edges. This is called Benard convection (named after the first to study them, Claude Bernard). As we increase the temperature difference even more, eventually the motion becomes random again and the water begins to boil.
Two surprising things about this phenomenon are the pattern and the phase transitions. The pattern is relatively neat, most cells are the same size and mostly the same hexagonal shape. The phase transitions are like the ones we couldn't predict for water, at different stages in heating we get a different distinct story. For water it was ice, water, vapor. For sulfur, it is orthorhombic sulfur, yellow liquid, red viscous liquid, and various stages of vapor. For our shallow pan of water, it is: random conductive heating, Benard convection, roiling boil. Actually as the temperature gets hotter and hotter, the boiling goes through a few more qualitative changes.
This also happens in the extremely thin layer of atmosphere on earth. It is the beginning of weather patterns.
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Materials: shallow petri dish, some fluid either water with sparkles in it? or a higher viscosity fluid? some way to heat it from below uniformly. A way to heat it from above also, perhaps blow dryer. thermometer, maybe curious lighting techniques?
Method: watch water heat up, heat quickly to boil, seems to be chaos. Now heat more slowly and find temperature at which convection cells form. may have to experiment with depth of water. Now take temperature of bottom surface and air above water. now try the experiment again but this time heating both the bottom and heating the air above, do we get convection cells?
Discussion
If you heat a shallow layer of water in a pan, at a low temperature you get random motions in the water molecules as they carry the heat (molecular motion) from the high temperature bottom of the pan to the low temperature surface of the water. On a macro scale what you begin to see is that the layer of water directly above the pan expands (gets warmer) and thus less dense than the layer above it and rises. This rising layer breaks up into blobs randomly. Of course if blobs are rising, blobs of water at the top must sink because they are more dense (cooler). Already the fact that these homogenous layers break up into blobs is curious math. In fact, i'm not sure we fully understand it (lookup studies of water droplets and splashes, very complex!). The breaking up of the top layer into blobs as they descend, i think is mediated in a complex way by the surface tension of the water at the top. (surface tension is the stuff that makes water creep up the edges of a container of water a millimeter or so, called the meniscus.)
As you raise the temperature of the bottom of the pan relative to the top of the water you get more random motion. at a certain temperature difference, though, these rising and falling blobs eventually arrange themselves (surprise!) into a fairly neat hexagonal array of convection cells. Warm water rises in the center of each cell and falls at the edges. This is called Benard convection (named after the first to study them, Claude Bernard). As we increase the temperature difference even more, eventually the motion becomes random again and the water begins to boil.
Two surprising things about this phenomenon are the pattern and the phase transitions. The pattern is relatively neat, most cells are the same size and mostly the same hexagonal shape. The phase transitions are like the ones we couldn't predict for water, at different stages in heating we get a different distinct story. For water it was ice, water, vapor. For sulfur, it is orthorhombic sulfur, yellow liquid, red viscous liquid, and various stages of vapor. For our shallow pan of water, it is: random conductive heating, Benard convection, roiling boil. Actually as the temperature gets hotter and hotter, the boiling goes through a few more qualitative changes.
This also happens in the extremely thin layer of atmosphere on earth. It is the beginning of weather patterns.
31.2) Distributed Brownian Motion Machinery: Clathrin Coated Pits
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Learn the particular kind of Brownian motion machinery that cells exploit to explore possibilities and make patterns and solve problems. show the mechanism of clathrin coated pits that cells use to ingest food packets.
some forms of endocytosis in cells is done as follows: receptor molecules randomly swim around on the cell membrane. when one bumps into the thing it's supposed to sense outside of the cell, it attaches, and rearranges it's butt sticking into the cell. clathrin molecules swim around just beneath the cell membrane inside. when one bumps into an activated receptor's butt it holds on with it's center while it holds out its 3 arms which are arranged symmetrically and bent INTO the membrane a little bit. well eventually another receptor swims by and bumps into the thing that's got to be brought into the cell, it activates and another clathrin attaches. the clathrins hold each other's arms. each molecule only "knows" about its neighbors. as more of this happens, aided by Brownian motion of all molecules involved, a cage is formed around a piece of cell membrane enclosing the stuff to be brought in and eventually pinches off. very clever. look:
Receptor-mediated endocytosis by clathrin-coated vesicles
By Dr Tony Jackson *
A review of how research into the components of the clathrin coat has provided insights into the operation of these molecular machines
http://www.abcam.com/index.html?pageconfig=resource&rid=10236&pid=14
mechanism of forming clathrin coated vesicles:
http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/picrender.fcgi?artid=1225879&blobtype=pdf
The clathrin machine is not like a computer program at all. the processing is totally distributed. furthermore I suspect we could isolate the molecules involved and get them to work without the whole live cell shebang. have to probably supply the proteins ready phosphorylated though.
why not call it a machine? what's your definition of a machine? something with gears, pulleys and integrated circuits? I think of machines as things you can understand by seeing how the separate parts interact.
Learn the particular kind of Brownian motion machinery that cells exploit to explore possibilities and make patterns and solve problems. show the mechanism of clathrin coated pits that cells use to ingest food packets.
some forms of endocytosis in cells is done as follows: receptor molecules randomly swim around on the cell membrane. when one bumps into the thing it's supposed to sense outside of the cell, it attaches, and rearranges it's butt sticking into the cell. clathrin molecules swim around just beneath the cell membrane inside. when one bumps into an activated receptor's butt it holds on with it's center while it holds out its 3 arms which are arranged symmetrically and bent INTO the membrane a little bit. well eventually another receptor swims by and bumps into the thing that's got to be brought into the cell, it activates and another clathrin attaches. the clathrins hold each other's arms. each molecule only "knows" about its neighbors. as more of this happens, aided by Brownian motion of all molecules involved, a cage is formed around a piece of cell membrane enclosing the stuff to be brought in and eventually pinches off. very clever. look:
Receptor-mediated endocytosis by clathrin-coated vesicles
By Dr Tony Jackson *
A review of how research into the components of the clathrin coat has provided insights into the operation of these molecular machines
http://www.abcam.com/index.html?pageconfig=resource&rid=10236&pid=14
mechanism of forming clathrin coated vesicles:
http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/picrender.fcgi?artid=1225879&blobtype=pdf
The clathrin machine is not like a computer program at all. the processing is totally distributed. furthermore I suspect we could isolate the molecules involved and get them to work without the whole live cell shebang. have to probably supply the proteins ready phosphorylated though.
why not call it a machine? what's your definition of a machine? something with gears, pulleys and integrated circuits? I think of machines as things you can understand by seeing how the separate parts interact.
29) Which Has More Moving Parts: A Bacteria Or New York City?
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For people in a big city like New York. sit across from a large apartment building in the city. start counting how many bricks it takes to get from the left side of one window to the next. count how many windows across the building there are. multiply to find how many bricks are all the way across the building. lets say the building is square and lets be generous and pretend the building is entirely filled with bricks. so if we take this number, say it is 250, lets multiply it by itself to get how many bricks there are laid flat in one layer all the way through the building. now count how many bricks from the bottom of one window to the bottom of the next window. multiply that by how many floors. that's how many layers of bricks there would be if the building were entirely filled with bricks. multiply this number of layers by the number of bricks in a layer. that's A LOT of bricks!
Now how many buildings are there in that block? you can multiply again. walk up the street or avenue and count. maybe 4X10? so multiply that by how many bricks per building!
Now how many blocks in your city? multiply again! how many streets long by how many streets wide is it? you may need to get a full sized map and count, approximate! for NYC, I figured 200 streets from the bottom to the top times 10 avenues wide gives me 2000 blocks in Manhattan then I multiply by 5 for all 5 boroughs of my city.
so how many bricks do you get? you may want to use scientific notation to write it down.
here's the fun part. imagine ALL those bricks in your minds eye. now, how many molecules are there swirling around in an E. coli bacteria? how do we count that? from our chemistry section we learned that one mole of molecules contains 6X10^23 molecules. Let's start with how large a bacteria is. from our microscope explorations we figured it was about one micron X micron X 3microns long. that's 3cubic micrometers. lets convert to cubic cm! multiply by 1cubic mm per 10^3x10^3x10^3 micrometers =10^-9 mm^3 x 1cubic cm per 10x10x10 mm = 10^-12cm^3 x 1mol/18cubic cm H2O *5/100= 5x10x 6x10^23 molecules/mol =
[now the question is: do i just suggest the methods or do i also show the worked out answers:
there are more atoms in the simplest bacteria than there are bricks in NYC. there are more enzymes huffing and puffing doing their work and taking part in construction projects in that bacteria than there people in NYC (8million) there are more ribosomes in that bacteria than there are buildings in NYC churning out new enzymes every second.
a bacteria is busier place than all of NYC!
there is a mole of atoms in my finger approximately:
10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 of them. think of each group of three zeros as another level of complexity. the reality of Avogadro's number is that it takes that many levels of complexity to grow my finger (and the rest of me) and repair my finger when it is cut, and to maintain it and make it act.
Avogadro's number is a wild part of our knowledge of reality that has NOT yet entered popular consciousness.
let's see, E. coli: let's say 3cubic micrometer. so 6*10^23 molecules/18cm^3 H2O is
10^23 molecules/3cm^3
10^23 /3cm^3
10^23/3000 mm^3
10^20/3mm^3
10^20/3*10^9 micron^3
10^11molecules/micron^3
that's 100billion.
now a million ribosomes*60proteins*1000 aminos*10H2O= that's 60billion right there. must be a high estimate.
if a protein is 12,000 H2O's into 10^11 that could be 10 million proteins/enzymes
10bricks laid across a window, 20 high that's 200 * 10 *10 windows that's 20,000 *100 deep that's 2million bricks per building if it were solid. times 5 * 10 buildings per block is 100million *200 *10 blocks per Manhattan is 200billion * 5 boroughs that's 1000 billion. oops more bricks than molecules. but if you don't imagine buildings to be solid.. well anyway the numbers are comparable
For people in a big city like New York. sit across from a large apartment building in the city. start counting how many bricks it takes to get from the left side of one window to the next. count how many windows across the building there are. multiply to find how many bricks are all the way across the building. lets say the building is square and lets be generous and pretend the building is entirely filled with bricks. so if we take this number, say it is 250, lets multiply it by itself to get how many bricks there are laid flat in one layer all the way through the building. now count how many bricks from the bottom of one window to the bottom of the next window. multiply that by how many floors. that's how many layers of bricks there would be if the building were entirely filled with bricks. multiply this number of layers by the number of bricks in a layer. that's A LOT of bricks!
Now how many buildings are there in that block? you can multiply again. walk up the street or avenue and count. maybe 4X10? so multiply that by how many bricks per building!
Now how many blocks in your city? multiply again! how many streets long by how many streets wide is it? you may need to get a full sized map and count, approximate! for NYC, I figured 200 streets from the bottom to the top times 10 avenues wide gives me 2000 blocks in Manhattan then I multiply by 5 for all 5 boroughs of my city.
so how many bricks do you get? you may want to use scientific notation to write it down.
here's the fun part. imagine ALL those bricks in your minds eye. now, how many molecules are there swirling around in an E. coli bacteria? how do we count that? from our chemistry section we learned that one mole of molecules contains 6X10^23 molecules. Let's start with how large a bacteria is. from our microscope explorations we figured it was about one micron X micron X 3microns long. that's 3cubic micrometers. lets convert to cubic cm! multiply by 1cubic mm per 10^3x10^3x10^3 micrometers =10^-9 mm^3 x 1cubic cm per 10x10x10 mm = 10^-12cm^3 x 1mol/18cubic cm H2O *5/100= 5x10x 6x10^23 molecules/mol =
[now the question is: do i just suggest the methods or do i also show the worked out answers:
there are more atoms in the simplest bacteria than there are bricks in NYC. there are more enzymes huffing and puffing doing their work and taking part in construction projects in that bacteria than there people in NYC (8million) there are more ribosomes in that bacteria than there are buildings in NYC churning out new enzymes every second.
a bacteria is busier place than all of NYC!
there is a mole of atoms in my finger approximately:
10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 of them. think of each group of three zeros as another level of complexity. the reality of Avogadro's number is that it takes that many levels of complexity to grow my finger (and the rest of me) and repair my finger when it is cut, and to maintain it and make it act.
Avogadro's number is a wild part of our knowledge of reality that has NOT yet entered popular consciousness.
let's see, E. coli: let's say 3cubic micrometer. so 6*10^23 molecules/18cm^3 H2O is
10^23 molecules/3cm^3
10^23 /3cm^3
10^23/3000 mm^3
10^20/3mm^3
10^20/3*10^9 micron^3
10^11molecules/micron^3
that's 100billion.
now a million ribosomes*60proteins*1000 aminos*10H2O= that's 60billion right there. must be a high estimate.
if a protein is 12,000 H2O's into 10^11 that could be 10 million proteins/enzymes
10bricks laid across a window, 20 high that's 200 * 10 *10 windows that's 20,000 *100 deep that's 2million bricks per building if it were solid. times 5 * 10 buildings per block is 100million *200 *10 blocks per Manhattan is 200billion * 5 boroughs that's 1000 billion. oops more bricks than molecules. but if you don't imagine buildings to be solid.. well anyway the numbers are comparable
25) What Are The Building Blocks For Cells?
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Materials:
glass jar, plastic vial, distilled water, tap water, oscillatoria culture. optional: watch glass, microbalance, bunsen burner?
Lets grow some Oscillatoria. We'll collect some Oscillatoria from a pond. watch it. pretty sophisticated algae! the strands can slide against each other and arrange themselves into sheets to catch the sun! of course they reproduce. notice that there are two different kinds of cells in the strands.
Here are some electron micrographs: pretty complicated inside.
now we'll grow them from scratch. We'll boil a jar to kill all the critters in it wash it out. Next we'll filter some water out, to get all the critters and gunk and parts out of it. boil it to kill any other critters we missed. look at it under a microscope. can't find anything in there? ok, we'll put it in the jar, put in a few strands of Oscillatoria, leave some air, and put it in the sun.
what happens? IT GROWS! what on earth is it building all those parts out of? where does the GREEN come from? It's time for our next level of discovery: CHEMISTRY!
Maybe there is lots of stuff still in the water! we can try to distill the water and use that. does it grow as well?
we can try to grow it in a plastic vial instead of glass, does it grow as well in that?
after we grow a bunch of Oscillatoria, we can weigh it, then dry it out then weigh it again, then burn it. turns into smoke and ash? what's is THAT? try weighing that!here, try burning some wood, how does THAT turn to smoke, and moisture, and ash. Just what IS stuff that it can go through these TRANSFORMATIONS? We have to imagine a whole new level of parts and how they are put together. It certainly is looking like living creatures take each other apart and can even use water, glass and air into VERY SMALL parts to make themselves! what are these parts?
back to best labs summary contents
Materials:
glass jar, plastic vial, distilled water, tap water, oscillatoria culture. optional: watch glass, microbalance, bunsen burner?
Lets grow some Oscillatoria. We'll collect some Oscillatoria from a pond. watch it. pretty sophisticated algae! the strands can slide against each other and arrange themselves into sheets to catch the sun! of course they reproduce. notice that there are two different kinds of cells in the strands.
Here are some electron micrographs: pretty complicated inside.
now we'll grow them from scratch. We'll boil a jar to kill all the critters in it wash it out. Next we'll filter some water out, to get all the critters and gunk and parts out of it. boil it to kill any other critters we missed. look at it under a microscope. can't find anything in there? ok, we'll put it in the jar, put in a few strands of Oscillatoria, leave some air, and put it in the sun.
what happens? IT GROWS! what on earth is it building all those parts out of? where does the GREEN come from? It's time for our next level of discovery: CHEMISTRY!
Maybe there is lots of stuff still in the water! we can try to distill the water and use that. does it grow as well?
we can try to grow it in a plastic vial instead of glass, does it grow as well in that?
after we grow a bunch of Oscillatoria, we can weigh it, then dry it out then weigh it again, then burn it. turns into smoke and ash? what's is THAT? try weighing that!here, try burning some wood, how does THAT turn to smoke, and moisture, and ash. Just what IS stuff that it can go through these TRANSFORMATIONS? We have to imagine a whole new level of parts and how they are put together. It certainly is looking like living creatures take each other apart and can even use water, glass and air into VERY SMALL parts to make themselves! what are these parts?
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