The Newsletter for Science
in Motion at Susquehanna University
Volume IV Issue 6 March 2005
Director's Column
Recently, I
tagged along on visits with both Mobile Educators to see first hand the impact
SIM has on high school students. My first visit was to the classroom of John
Tamblin at Mt. Carmel High School. Mr. Tamblin’s
students worked their way through the new Chemistry Crime Scene with
direction from Ms. Erica Merriett.
On the day of my visit, the students used the MeltTemps to determine the identity
of a white powder
collected from a suspect and compared their results to the
white powder at the crime scene. Students from three different levels of Chemistry
classes were all successful in identifying the white powder belonging to their
suspect. I was impressed with the versatility of the SIM Chemistry Crime Scene
experiments, and I hope other teachers will try this experiment in their classroom.
Chemical Crime Scene Melting Point lab
to students at Mt. Carmel.
My second visit was to the classrooms of Kathy Bower and Jocelyn Bailey at Milton Senior High School. Mrs. Bower’s and Mrs. Bailey’s students both worked through the DNA Fingerprinting experiment with direction from Ms. Madge Schworer. The students quickly learned how to use the micropipets and were successful in loading and running agarose gels to compare the DNA of five suspects to the DNA found at a crime scene. The gels were stained overnight, but it was apparent by the end of the day that gels from the earlier periods showed easily comparable bands. This visit demonstrated how various levels of students benefit from exposure to just one SIM experiment.
During my visit to Milton, I also visited the classroom of Karen Avery to see the results her students obtained using Protein Electrophoresis to determine fish evolution. Mrs. Avery developed an extension to this lab to allow her students to quantitatively compare results. This is a wonderful example of how teachers can adapt SIM experiments to fit their classroom needs.
I want to remind teachers to sign
up for our Science in Motion Summer Workshop scheduled for
Monday, June 13 through Friday, June 17, 2005. To sign up,
fill out the registration form sent with last month’s newsletter and
mail or fax it to SIM. If you can’t find your form, you can give Melanie
a call at 372-4779 and register by phone.
Erica Merriett, Chemistry Mobile Educator Says…
I hope all this sunshine means
that Spring is here! I started off the last stretch with snow being a major
factor in my schedule. I brought the Chemistry Crime Scene in John
Tamblin’s classes at Mount Carmel High School
in the end of February and beginning of March. We started off the week using
the Mel-Temps to identify solids. The delays, early dismissals and snow days
made for a rather confusing and hectic week, but overall the students were still
successful. With warmer weather in site, I imagine that future visits with the
crime scene will run much more smoothly.
Since then, I have had a little break from the crime scene. I went back to
Line Mountain High School to do the Heat of Fusion for Ice lab
with John Traver’s chemistry classes. The lab was very
successful and the
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students really seemed to enjoy doing a lab that was rather fast-paced so they could easily do calculations and see their results in the same period. The middle of March brought me to Southern Columbia High School for the first time this year. I had a great day doing the Simple Machines lab with Angela Gockley’s and Dean Brewer’s physical science classes. The lab continues to work well and appears to be quite enjoyable for the students. After that, it was off to Milton High School to do Titration Curves of Strong and Weak Acids and Bases with Deb Smeltzer’s Chem II students for two days. Once students got some practice using the burets, the titrations went very well and they became quite good at it. At the same time as the titration lab, I took another physical science lab out to Milton High School. The students in Jocelyn Bailey’s Introduction to Chemistry and Physics classes did the Graphing Your Motion lab using the Motion Detectors. Jocelyn pretty much ran this lab on her own, but I did stop in to check it out while the students were working. They seemed to be having a lot of fun trying to get their motion to match the graph provided by the program.
Congratulations to Angela Gockley and Dean Brewer at Southern Columbia High School and Corey Hunter at Montoursville High School for being the first users of our new online reservation form. It can be found at www.susqu.edu/SIM/reservation.htm. I have quite a few days open in the end of April, but May and June are booked solid. Contact me at merriett@susqu.edu to schedule any remaining dates. Don’t forget that you can also borrow equipment and computers to do your own labs!
Madge Schworer, Biology Mobile Educator Says…
This certainly was the month for electrophoresis and bacteria! In February, Bob Hartman's Biology classes at Shamokin High School investigated the Sensitivity of Bacteria to disinfectants and antibiotics, Pam Ulicny's Environmental Science students at Tri-Valley Junior/Senior High School used the Gram Stain to
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Danville High School load agarose gels. |
learn more about bacteria, and Bob Hartman’s AP Biology students from Shamokin High School and Sonia Crane’s AP Biology students from Danville High School and Bo Meyer’s Biology students from Williamsport High School performed the Bacterial Transformation lab using the pGLO plasmid and were rewarded with glowing results. Karen Avery's Biology II students from Milton High School and Pam Ulicny's Biology students from Tri-Valley Junior/Senior High School extracted fish proteins and ran SDS-polyacrylamide protein gels revealing the similarities and differences in protein bands between fish species in Something's Fishy about Evolution. The Milton students' calculations of percentages of similar protein bands
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Tri-Valley Junior/Senior High School examine gram stain bacteria. |
confirmed the relationships seen on the evolutionary tree. DNA Fingerprinting using agarose gel electrophoresis was done by Kathy Bower and Jocelyn Bailey's Biology A students at Milton High School, and was an element of Angela Farronato’s and Pam Ulicny’s Crime Scene Investigations at Mt. Carmel High School and Tri-Valley Junior/Senior High respectively. Sonia Crane's AP Biology students at Danville High School used agarose gels and lambda DNA cut with restriction enzymes to learn about the creation of a DNA size standard curve and used it to calculate unknown DNA band sizes. The DNA electrophoresis was such a success that Sonia has scheduled an equipment loan for her other Biology classes! A bit of variety this month was provided as I took the Enzyme Activity lab to Geoff Goodenow's Biology classes at Lewisburg High School investigating, in depth, temperature and pH effects on enzymes. Allison Spencer's Biology classes at Berwick High School used CO2 sensors to study respiration and photosynthesis in spinach leaves and Sheila Furr's Biochemistry students at Shikellamy High School used the lab Limitations on Cell Size to understand the importance of surface area to the exchange of materials by cells. WOW!
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loading protein gel. |
I have been able to add some equipment
loans to the Biology schedule and I hope to be able to sneak in a couple of
visits that have been requested as soon as the danger of snow schedule changes
has passed. I truly appreciate your patience as I try to juggle my schedule.
I look forward to working on plans for the Summer Workshop after the spring
break. Please feel free to email me
schworer@susqu.edu if you have a need
for equipment loans or if you have suggestions for topics for the Summer Workshop.
I will try my best to help you out!
Biology Experiment of the Month
DNA Fingerprinting
Using a restriction enzyme digest of plasmid DNA, students use agarose gel electrophoresis to prepare and analyze a DNA fingerprint. Students are introduced to restriction enzymes as a tool in DNA analysis. The DNA digests can be done by the students or we can do the digests for them ahead to save time. This lab introduces students to the general technique of size separation with electrophoresis. Samples are loaded on the agarose gels using the micropipettes that are quite popular lab tools! After the gels are run they are stained and the visualized DNA can be analyzed at several levels: students can simply compare banding patterns to match a "crime scene DNA" with various suspects; or further analysis can be done using a molecular weight standard curve derived from a DNA size standard run on the same agarose gel. Measuring the distance traveled by each DNA band and using the standard curve allows students to determine the size of the DNA fragments seen on their gels. DNA fingerprinting is an element of the popular Biology Crime Scene Investigation, however, as you can see by the many DNA electrophoresis labs reported in " Madge says . . . for March" the DNA Fingerprinting lab is popular on its own. The AP DNA lab using precut lambda DNA can also be scheduled using our electrophoresis equipment. The students get a great deal of satisfaction in loading their own gels and then coming back to analyze the DNA bands the next day. If you are comfortable with electrophoresis but simply don't have enough equipment, this lab lends itself well to an equipment loan. This is a great experience for all levels of students.
Save a Tree
If
you wish to receive this newsletter in electronic format, please send us your
e-mail address at sciencemotion@susqu.edu
or phone us at 570-372-4779.
Courtney
Thomas
Director, Science in Motion
570-372-4778
thomasc@susqu.edu
