User:Lauren Lit/Notebook/Biology 210 at AU

2/9/14 - Lab 2: Identifying Algae and Protists

Introduction: Understanding and Identifying Unicellular Organisms, specifically Algae and Protists. Algae and Protists have very specialized characteristics. While they are different organisms they both come from a common ancestor and are both unicellular eukaryote.

Materials and Methods: - A wet mount was created using 8 different known organisms --> A drop of the specimen solution containing various organisms were placed on the slide and covered with a coverslip -The wet mount and specimens were viewed under tthe microscope -Once an organism was located it was characterized using a Dichotomous Key

Observations and Data The observations and data should be: (1) Recorded honestly!!! Remember, sometimes unexpected findings are what lead us to the best scientific advances. Everything has some meaning, even if it doesn’t make sense at the time (2) Recorded as you go along in the notebook. Don’t trust your memory. You will forget the little details. You can make notes and then transfer to a lab notebook or openwetware. (3) Recorded as completely as possible. You don’t need to interpret the data in this section, for you will do that in the next section (4) Recorded in an easy to read format. You can draw graphs or write tables in this section to illustrate your data in a more user-friendly way Conclusions Your conclusions should be based on your data. Therefore, they may not agree with your purpose or hypothesis, and this is O.K. Explain whether your data supported or refuted your hypothesis. You may want to include any ideas that this experiment generated before you forget them. This is where you can make suggestions to improve your experimental design and say what you plan to do next (e.g., “next time I may want to harvest a sample from 5 inches below the surface because I think that the temperature at the surface is too cold to get a diversity of protists…”)

1/31/14 - Lab 1: Biological Life at AU

The objective of Lab 1 Proceedure 1 is to understand Natural Selection. To get an understanding of natural selection 3 members of the volvacine line were observed under the microscope. They included Chlamydomonas, gonium, and volvox.

Chlamydomonas Number of cells: 1 Colony Size: 23 Functional specialization Cells: Flagellum for movement and chloroplast

Gonium Number of cells: 75-100 Colony Size: 3 Functional specialization Cells: Flagellum

Vovox Number of cells: about 500 Colony Size: 1

Picture to be added here.

The objective of part 2 is to understand the biotic and abiotic aspects of a niche at American University outside the Katzen Arts Center.

Abiotic Factors Pebbles, large rocks, little rocks dead leaves wood chips bricks soil

Biotic Factors Cotton Tails Red Bushs Grass Weeds

Picture to be added here.

In the future I will be going back to the niche to observe any changes that may have occured to the factors, individually and how they interact together. LL.

Good start. Could be improved with more substance. Address red text from protocol include detailed descriptions, analysis and conclusions. For more instructions see TA notebook. SK

1/26/14 - Lauren Lit's Lab Notebook - Bio210. LL