Wednesday, February 25, 2009

Discovering Cells

With science fair behind us now, yesterday our classes were finally able to get back into our science lessons. We picked up right where we left off with microscopes. Yesterday we took time to examine Elodea Leafs. Above is a picture that I took of a leaf at a total magnification of 400x. Students were asked to not only draw their observations but also verbally describe what exactly they saw. As you can imagine, many described it as bricks or snake skin.

Our set up of the Elodea Leaf

Elodea at 100x total magnification

Our students were able to figure out what we have found were cells. Students were able to identify that there was definite boundaries (cell wall) between all the cells and that each one contained something between its four walls (cytoplasm). Below is a diagram of what exactly makes up an Elodea.

We will continue our conversations about the make up of a cell on Thursday, as I am out today for a Root Canal....yikes. On Thursday we are also going to conduct our first live lab discussion via Ning Chat. This will be our official test run and I will post more information about where and when you can check out our lab chat tomorrow.

Mr. McClung

6 comments:

pcone said...

that is cool i never knew that their is actally kind of walls

The Trucker's Wife said...

Oh man, guess the cookies had some bad timing. Hope you feel better soon. TW

jkmcclung said...

Thanks, it actually was not that bad. I should be fine tomorrow.

Wm Chamberlain said...

No wonder you sounded like you had a mouth full of cotton on twitter!

jkmcclung said...

Excuse me, I druled on the keyboard because my entire face is numb!

Anonymous said...

that looks so cool i've always wanted to see what its like to use a microscope.