Honey Bees:
In an ecosystem, honeybees play the role of the pollinators. The bees fly around and land on different flowers where the pollen from these flowers attach to the hairs on their legs and bodies. As the bees travel around to different flowers and plants, the pollen clinging to their bodies disperses and pollinates new plants. Bees are important because they pollinate the fresh produce and other pollinated foods that we eat. We should be concerned about the disappearance of bees because they are such a vital part of our ecosystem. These foods that are so easily accessible to us would become expensive and hard to get because the measures for growing them would be harder and require more work. Without bees our available foods would diminish and so would the plants that grow all around us.
For this project, I chose to focus on the anatomy of the honey because of how much I enjoyed the cat dissections. Since the anatomy of a bee is so much different than that of a human or another animal I felt that I could learn a great amount from dissecting a bee. Through researching about this topic, I learned that honeybees have a separate stomach to hold the nectar that the bees collect and carry back to the nest. This stomach is called the crop and it is located above the main stomach for easy regurgitation of the crop's contents when returning to the nest. After doing my research, I began to dissect my honeybee. For each body part, I looked at the part under a microscope and then pinned the part to my foam board for display. I am most proud of my attention to detail when taking apart the bee and pinning it the board. Because it was so difficult to take apart, I am proud of my ability to take most of the body parts off the bee then pin and label. Yet if I were to go back and do this project again, I would use the microscope with the camera to take up close pictures of the honeybees to see the tiny details on their bodies.
Dissection - Cat:
For this project, we had the option to either dissect a cat, fetal pig, or a shark. I chose to dissect a cat because I had already dissected a pig and a shark before. I was excited to examine the muscular structures in the cat and see how their muscles were different from ours. I also wanted to do the cat because it was the biggest animal and because of that, all of the systems in the body would be larger and easier to see. Through dissecting my cat, I learned about the muscles systems and I learned a lot about the heart. Before doing this project, I didn't know very much about the heart and what each separate part did and by doing this project, I learned a great amount about the heart and how it functions. After doing this project, I have learned that I would indeed like to go into the medical field and work in something that has to do with some kind of surgery.
Crime Scene Investigation:
This project started when we were taught about the justice system and exoneration. We started off the project by watching the movie about the Memphis 3 and how they were wrongly accused of killing three young boys. Because of their wrongful conviction, they spent 18 years in prison with the sentence of life in prison, and in 2011 they were let out on Alford Plea. We also learned about how the use of DNA testing has made the justice system more accurate and more reliable since eyewitness accounts aren’t always true and false identification and the like are possible. After the initial introduction to the justice system, we were introduced to our crime scene investigation project. For this project we were assigned partners and a crime scene where we had to do a series of tests and investigate the scene to determine what happened in the crime.
The forensic sciences that I learned about and used during my crime scene investigation were forensic entomology, forensic odontology, superglue fuming and nuclear DNA testing. Forensic entomology is the study of insects that are found on corpses and can be used to determine PMI (Post-Mortem Interval). Forensic odontology, also known as forensic dentistry, is the study of using dental records and analyzing teeth and bite marks to identify a person. Superglue fuming the process for how forensic scientists make fingerprints visible and able to be analyzed. This process consists of putting a fingerprinted item and superglue into an incubator so the fumes of the evaporating stick to the oils of the fingerprint. Once this is done, black powder is then put on the prints and analyzed. Nuclear DNA testing is the process of extracting DNA then using the polymerase chain reaction and gel electrophoresis to get DNA’s ‘fingerprint’. The DNA fingerprint is then compared to other DNA fingerprints to figure out who the DNA belongs to.
The forensic science that I found the most interesting during this project was forensic odontology. I thought that this was the most interesting because I am interested in dentistry and I find it amazing that so much can be determined through only teeth. During this project, I think I did a good job of getting my work done on time and also refining my work to make it better. I wish that I had done a better job of finding more official websites for research to base my evidence reports on. I had a hard time finding websites that would provide me with a lot of good information about the topic I was learning about so in the future, I would spend more time trying to find good, reliable websites.
The forensic sciences that I learned about and used during my crime scene investigation were forensic entomology, forensic odontology, superglue fuming and nuclear DNA testing. Forensic entomology is the study of insects that are found on corpses and can be used to determine PMI (Post-Mortem Interval). Forensic odontology, also known as forensic dentistry, is the study of using dental records and analyzing teeth and bite marks to identify a person. Superglue fuming the process for how forensic scientists make fingerprints visible and able to be analyzed. This process consists of putting a fingerprinted item and superglue into an incubator so the fumes of the evaporating stick to the oils of the fingerprint. Once this is done, black powder is then put on the prints and analyzed. Nuclear DNA testing is the process of extracting DNA then using the polymerase chain reaction and gel electrophoresis to get DNA’s ‘fingerprint’. The DNA fingerprint is then compared to other DNA fingerprints to figure out who the DNA belongs to.
The forensic science that I found the most interesting during this project was forensic odontology. I thought that this was the most interesting because I am interested in dentistry and I find it amazing that so much can be determined through only teeth. During this project, I think I did a good job of getting my work done on time and also refining my work to make it better. I wish that I had done a better job of finding more official websites for research to base my evidence reports on. I had a hard time finding websites that would provide me with a lot of good information about the topic I was learning about so in the future, I would spend more time trying to find good, reliable websites.