Unit 2 Reflection

Unit two's main theme is what chemistry ideas should biologists know. Since we study life, we need to know certain chemistry main points to help us extend our knowledge. Molecules are the basic building blocks of life. They can make up three main bonds such as Hydrogen bonds, Ionic bonds or covalent bonds. Water is made up of hydrogen and oxygen and its extremely important to life. Water is great for making solutions, and can attract other molecules. Acids bases and pH are also important to biology because they have characteristics that are crucial for our labs such as the enzyme lab that we did. The next size of molecules we studies were the macro molecules including carbohydrates, lipids, protein, and Nucleic Acids. They are all crucial parts of our bodies. We also studies enzymes structures which we went into dept with our cheese lab where we tested the factors that affected enzymes.



Doing the labs helped me understand how the things we learned in vodcasts such as sugars are made and how the characteristics of it affects its taste, look, and structure. In the Sweetness Lab, we deducted that disachharides were the sweetest, and in our enzyme lab, we tested and made the conclusion that chymosin is hot and acidic temperatures were the ideal to make enzymes work fastest.

I would love to learn more about how to eat healthy from a proper source, and not advertisements and people who have an ulterior motive, because eating healthy and keeping my body in shape is an important part of my life. I would like to be able to tell which foods I'm eating are actually good for me, and not just labels trying to trick and sell their product.

Sweetness Lab

Since polysaccharide carbs are multi ringed they have little or no taste in comparison to mono or di- saccharide carbs which can vary from extreme sweetness to sour, ill tastes. The degree of sweetness for sucrose was provided as 100. Fructose a one ringed carb was ranked as 150 on degree of sweetness. However, Starch, a polysaccharide was ranked 0, for it had little taste at all. I believe that since it takes more time to break down polysaccharides, the flavor is not immediately released like a monosachharide is.

The more rings a carbohydrate has, the harder it is to break down and process, so carbs like starch and cellulose last longer and provide energy for a longer time. Sucrose is a one ringed  carbohydrate, and while it is necessary, it provide little energy in the long term and burns off quickly. Multi ringed carbs can be used for storing energy and for  fueling the body, while one ringed carbs can be used to simply provide energy for the time when it is digested or created.

Since I did not have enough time to share result with my whole group i had to base my results with my neighbor, Eman. While we had similar results they did vary, especially the ones that were harder to discern whether there was any flavor at all. The fact that she probably had more or less quantity of carbs, her tastes buds are more or less developed and that her palate was not properly cleansed are mine was not, all prove to be sufficient variables to explain why we may have gotten different results.

The tongue possesses taste buds which have tiny little taste cells on them. When the sweetness reacts with the taste cells, it sends a signal to the brain shouting HEY SUGAR! SWEET! Taste cells only live for about a week and they can become damaged, so that could have led to my group getting different results than mine. They could have also been introduced to different levels of sugar so that the amount that they processed made their brain note down a different degree of sweetness than mine.

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Biology Collage

Jean Lab Conclusion

In this lab we asked the question if bleach breaks down pigments then will a higher amount bleach damage the fabric.  We found that certain levels of bleach can cause sufficient color change to the jeans. The jean squares that were put in the 100% bleach concentration got about 60% lighter, and the ones that were doused in plain water did not change at all. I thought that since bleach often left holes in clothing in my experience, at least some damage would occur to the fabric either in general look, or texture. This did not match the results we got because other than slight discoloration and some texture roughness, there was minimal damage to the actual jean.

Our data contradicts to the expected results because we constantly messed up the the lab. We accidently left the timer on for too long and our labels were slightly messy and unorganized. We accidently mixed up bleach and water solutions and washed the jeans out with bleach.

Those errors most definitely affected the final results as they were not as obvious as the other groups.  Due to those errors I would definitely try to improve communication and work harder to keep organized.

This lab was done to was done to help us understand the scientific method and for us to learn how to write a proper conclusion. This lab reinforced what I had learnt in middle school on how to write a hypothesis and follow lab protocol. This also helped me understand how to write a more in depth scientific conclusion than what we did in eighth grade. Based on my experience in this lab, I will continue to explore how to write a proper conclusion and how to follow the scientific method, as well as focus on being more neat and organized while doing the lab itself.