This week we talked about resperation and photosythosis. We wanted to know what resperation does and what ingredients it uses. We broke it down into an intake and exhale. Someone said that O2 (oxygen) goes is, and CO2 (carbondioxide) comes out. Also, we knew for a fact from a past experiment that H2O is exhaled in resperation. We did experiments and reaserch to learn if this was true and if there was anything else to reperation.

Our first test was to see if it was true that CO2 is expeled in resperation. Mr. Segan had a CO2 sensor that we could use. The experiment was, we put the CO2 sensor in a jar and got a control reading. Then we took out the sensor and Mr. Segan exhaled into the jar and put the sensor back in. If CO2 is and ending ingredient, then the amount of CO2 in the jar should go up when you exhale into the jar. Our hypothesis turned out to be correct, so we knew that CO2 was an ending ingredient.

Now we needed to do an exeriment to learn if O2 only goes in and doesn't come out. We were split into groups to create experiments. My group knew that when you blow into something, air comes out, and that when you pull air out of something, new air rushes in. We decided to read the amount of O2 in the jar, then exhale into the jar like for the CO2 test, only we were expecting the O2 level to go down, and it did. This proved that oxygen comes in but not out in resperation.

What we didn't understand was, what was happening to the oxygen, and where does the CO2 and H2O come from. We started to mention atoms in class. We said that O2 means 2 oxymen atoms together. CO2 means 1 carbon atom, and 2 oxygen atoms. H2O means 2 hydrogen atoms and 1 oxygen atom. So really it wasn't O2 going in and H2O/ CO2 coming out, it was two oxygen atoms going in and 2 oxygen atoms coming out with one carbon atom and 2 hydrogen atoms.

But we still had the same problem, where did the carbon atom and two hydrogen atoms come from. We eventually said from food and water we eat and drink. We looked it up and carbohydrates are made of hydrogen, carbon and oxygen. The formula for carbohydrates is C6 H12 O6. Now the intake was O8 C6 H12 but the exhale was still CO2 and H2O. We needed to find the balanced amount that could go in and come out as complete CO2s and H2Os. We came up with C6 H12 O18 as the formula that creates complete resperation.

Now we are starting to understand photosythesis in class. I think that photosynthesis does everything reverse.

This week, the whole three days were devoted to the parts of animal, plant, and bacteria cells. We discussed simalarities and differences between the three. We used triple ven diagrams to compare the three cells. The animal and plant cells had almost all of the same organells. Their shapes though were completly different. A plant cell is like a brick and all the cells fit together. Animal cells have a sphere shape.



The three main organell differences between animal and plant cells are the chlorolplasts, cell wall, and vacuole. Chlorolplasts are only in plant cells. They create chlorophil to make the plant green. Only the plant cells has the cell wall and they use it to create their brick shape. The vacuole is in both cells, but it is bigger in the plant cell. The larger vacuole fills with water and makes the cell rigid. That is why when plants don't get water they wilt. This happens because the vacuole is drying up.



The last thing we did was talk about paramecium. We learned they are animal cells and is covered in cilla to move. We decided it lives in stagnant water like a lake or pond. We looked under a microscope at lake water to see what we could find. The paramecium we found were extremly fast and tiny. All that we couls make out was a clear oval with a black outline.