8th grade Unit 4 Genetics Blog

Like all the other units, this unit seemed hard at first and it became clearer and more understandable at the end. We started the Genetic Unit with a big foldable about DNA. This foldable covered most of the important things to know about the DNA. I already knew about the pairs of nitrogen bases, adenine and thymine, cytosine and guanine, and RNA. That was pretty much all that I knew before the unit. We learned about the steps in replicating DNA and making proteins. These two processes had steps that we just like the steps of meiosis and mitosis. 

In this unit we did several labs. I think that all the labs helped me understand the unit better. And I think that actually doing the things that we cover in the notes help with understanding it because you get to see if for yourself and experience the experiment actually happening. One of the main and most lively labs in this unit was the fruit flies crossing. In this lab, we took fruit flies with different traits and genetics and crossed them together. We crossed them by first assorting them. We used fly nap which temporarily put them to sleep. Then we distinguished between the males and the females. After that, we crossed them. Unfortunately, we weren't able to see the new offspring, but understood the concept. I think this lab was a great idea to expose us to actually doing it. I thought it was fun and hands-on.

The second lab that we did in this unit was the wheat germ lab that showed us the actual DNA extracting process. We performed the extraction by taking wheat and putting it in the beaker and using soap and alcohol to expose and show the DNA. The DNA looked like a white strand. This was cool because we got to see real DNA. 

In the Twizzler DNA lab, we made a replication of DNA and replicated them ourselves. We
used marshmallows and twizzlers to create the DNA and then we replicated it using the steps of DNA replication. I though this was a decent lab. We got to make a real life demonstration of DNA replicating itself.

On December 10, 2016, we had the invitational Science Olympiad tournament. This year, my role in the is team captain and I am participating in 2 events. I am continuing Mission Possible and also doing an event called Wright Stuff. Wright Stuff is sort of like Glider from last year, but we use rubber bands to power a propeller that makes the plane fly. My first event was Mission Possible which went pretty smoothly. The judges weren't too intense and we ended up getting first place. Then in the afternoon we had Wright Stuff. We had a main glider and a back up glider. Emma and I started with a test flight which went really well. So, we did an "official" flight next. The flight was good, but the glider kept hitting the ceiling which decreased our flight time. So I decided to lay down while launching the glider. This might've helped, but the best time we got was 47 seconds. We got 2nd place in this event. Overall, the experience was pretty good. Everything went well and the team scored second place overall. The next tournament is a regional that is in early March.

Next Friday, we have the science midterm. The first part of the year has really blown by fast. I haven't started studying yet, but I am going to soon. I have been understanding the material pretty well and I think I might have some blurry spots from the beggining. 

Some of the goals for next half of the school year is to really dig in and do my best. I want to get good grades and advance in my learning. I feel like I can achieve this goal by concentrating on studying and focusing on paying attention in school.