Skype chat with Charis Walko

Today in my science 9 class, we prepared a skype chat with a lady named Charis Walko. She works for a company called Stem Cell technology where they study stem cells. She talked to us about stem cells. She informed us about the three types of stem cells and what she does work wise in relation to stem cells. Our class asked her several questions that we came up with the day before.

Some of out questions

  • Are there other way to obtain pluripotent stem cells? Answer: the only way to obtain the cells are through a human embrio, how ever you can obtain certain cells such as skin cells from the skin, or blood from a bloos cell etc.
  • How do you made the medium for the embryo? Answer: when you are a baby in your mother’s stomach, she provides things like certain essential sugars. The medium that send signals to the cells to grow, contain those same sugars and things
  • How long does it take to creat a sheet of cells? Answer: It is a difficult process and takes around 45 days.

Unfortunatly, my pictures were not uploading BUT you can go to this link to see some of my friends pictures

http://myriverside.sd43.bc.ca/alysony2015/

 

 

 

Gene Mutation Project


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Hi there! I am a gene mutation.

I cause colour blindness. Unfortunately i am a negative mutation and i effect many people. You see, i am located in the X chromosome. Males have one x chromosome and females have two. That is why my gene friends and i effect 1/12 men and 1/200 females. I am a photopigment gene. When one of my bases were removed, i became a mutation. I was caused by deletion. I received the defect from my mother  because colour blindness is genetic. Some cases of my gene, are severe. The most common type of colour blindness is red and green colour deficiency. This is bad but manageable. This is when my host cannot see the colour red or green.

My host had red and green colour deficiency. One day his boss ran in late for a meeting. He threw him his keys and said “go get the green parked truck.” My host had only worked there a few days and had to go and get it. When he realized that there were 7 trucks that looked greenish, he had no choice but to try the keys in each one. By the time he got to the third truck, a parking police had caught him. Luckily his boss came to the rescue.
Colours are all over, and for those who have troubles seeing them can be put into some very tricky situations. Imagine not being able to see the colours you learn in kindergarten, or see the traffic lights clearly! A world in back and white, with the occasional colour. When you are colour blind, depending on the severity, you can see many colours to no colours at all.
There is no way to cure colour blindness because 99% is cause from my gene friends and I. The only way we could really cure my mutation is to receive some sort of gene therapy. Luckily for my host, there are some types of glasses that are capable of enhancing certain colours or shades  through the lenses. They do not give my host the ability to see colours perfectly, however they can see them better, and make out the difference between colours that otherwise would look the same.
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The questions that I came up with were:
-How does the mutation work?
-How do you receive the mutation?
-What does the mutation effect?
-Is it a positive mutation or a negative mutation?
– Where in your body does the mutation work?
– Is there a way to cure the mutation?
-How would this mutation effect someone’s life?
I have successfully answered all of my question using sites such as:
– Wikipedia (Internet site)
– www.colorblindawarness.org (Internet site)
– www.color-blindness.com (Internet site)
-www.lifenoggin.com (Youtube Video)
To retain information, I used Youtube, the internet, and i also talk to my family and friends.
These are some pitures I took to show you what it is like to be colour blind:
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The plan I had: 
My plan was to answer all my questions (the questions above) and truly understand my gene. Then using the facts I obtained i would write a few paragraphs about it. All the sites i used to answer my questions had quite thorough answer and were able to allow me to really understand my gene.
I think that the process went really smooth and it turned out just the way i planned. I incorporated all the information I was planning to and the outcome was great. Next time I would try to incorporate more stories to really give my audience a clear picture of my gene and how it effects people. By addinf more stories i mean to find more stories on how the gene has personally effected people and their lives. I believe that colour blindness is something people should know about because it effects so many people!

Edible DNA model

Today in science 9, my partner Alyson and I created an edible DNA model. What we did was used we remebered that A<—>T and G<—->C

Here are the steps used to creat the model:

– We had to figure out the corrisponding bases

– We had to find out how many we needed of each colour marshmallow

– We collected our materials

– Finally we assembled our structure

We found this activity fairly easy. All it needed was a little bit of planning

Here are some pics from the project:

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Space interview

Today in science 9, my class mates and i had an interview with someone who works on mars projects full time to answer some of our questions. We connected through video chat, and i really loved this method because it was like having a real conversation, even though she was in another part of Canada! We asked her many well thought out questions, the they were all generally answered successfully. An example of some of the questions we asked are:

– How did you become interested in this field of work?

– What planets other than Mars are capable of sustaining life?

– Can Mars rovers be brought back to Earth?

– How much does a Mar rover cost?

– What do you do specifically?

All of us understood what was going on and the questions were answered quite  thoroughly. I learned that video chat is a great method to contact someone, and I look forward to using it in the future. I learned quite a few new facts about space, and about some of the cool programs we have here in Canada.

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I am not sure why the pictures turned out sideways, but i am sure you get the just of it.

Currents from the kitchen

imageimageimagein this experement we tried to light a 2 volt led light bulb with a lemon, an orange and a potato.

Unfortunatly out result was that nothing lit up.

An observation that i have is that even though the lemon had acid, just like batteries have batterie acid, nothing happened on the light buld. However there were some movment on the voltage meter. I belive that there was a charge under 2 volts there for not being strong enough to light the bulb.

1. A complete circut will light the buld.

2. You can use the voltage meter to s  ee if the electrons are flowing.

3. The bulb didnt glow because there wasnt enough electicity.

4.we can use bigger vegtables with higher voltage to improve out chances.

5. The trasition metals are what are causing the electrons to flow. The crocodile clips help transfer the power to the bulb.

6. If you were camping, or there was a power outage, or a situation where there wasnt enough electricity, you could uuse this method as sourses of electicity.

7. This method was discovered a while ago and there arent fruits and vegetables big enough to power lightbulbs requiring 60 volts, let alone a whole city.

 

Electricity

I know very little about electricity but I added some pictures in the mind map because I associate those things with electricity. I don’t generally know how they work, but I am excited to learn all about it in our new unit.

20151102_093913lightning bolt

  1. What is electricity?
  2. How does electricity work?
  3. Is there different types of electricity?
  4. Can humans make electricity?
  5. What is the source of electricity?
  6. What conducts and stops electricity?
  7. How was electricity discovered?
  8. Who discovered it?

My Science App Review

I had a hard time picking what app is was going to use, but I came across an app called “SkyView.”

It’s a really cool app about astronomy, and it won an award for best science app of 2012.

My Questions were:

  1. Is it easy to find?
  2. Is it easy to use?
  3. Does it help you is multiple ways?
  4. Can you use it all the time?
  5. Is it easy to access?
  6. What can you learn from this app?
  7. An it help you in more than one subject  

My Answers were:

  1. Yes the app was really easy to find. When you search up astronomy apps, it is the first one to come up in the apple app store.
  2. I found the app pretty simple to use. What happens is they use your location to see what (stars, planets etc.) are near you. then you can search a constellation or what ever you want, and stars will show up on you screen. then an arrow shows you where to point the camera to and you can see where that  very constellation is. At first I wasn’t sure what to do, but when i watched the tutorial, located in “help,” and i searched it up online, I realized all the amazing things this app could do for me.
  3. It can help you find lots of things in space and you can search them up, or you can just see what is near you at the time.
  4. I like this app because you can use it in the day, and the is a setting where you can use it at night!
  5. It is really easy to access everything, there is a menu on the left side, and you can do everything from there
  6. It can teach you a lot of things, like what stars and things are near you, and it even give you information about everything you search up. If you have a question about a star for example, just search it in the “search,” and it will tell you about it will even show you where it is located at that time.
  7. It can only help you inn astronomy, but it is narrowed down and that it good. Instead of being an “Okay” app with everything, it is a really good app, for only one thing.

I can totally see why this app  got an award. It is so cool and i can’t wait till it is dark when i can use the night time settings.

For sure i am going to use this app when we do Astronomy because i thinks it will be able to help me along with other students. I think i will be able to use some really cool things from this app.

This is what it looks like:

SkyView

night-sky

SkyView_Free