Genius Hour ~ June 5 - June 11

This week I focused on making my slide show. I plan on having my past few science fair projects on there to give background on the effects that this has, and construct an idea what the full effect pH has on the human body. My past few experiments gave inconclusive results.

Genius Hour ~ May 29 - June 4

This week was spent actually doing my experiment. It had changed a lot from the original idea, I had placed a pig skin in a different petridish and groups of three made up a trial. I would put 3 drops of my treatment on the pig skin and let it sit for 24 hours. When there was no physical change in the pig skins I repeated put the treatments on them and letting them sit for another 24 hours. I had weighed them, and there was no huge difference between any of the pig skins and I suspect that all the weight lost was just water weight left in the skin. I'm kinda bummed out by my results, but I can bring up my past experiments in the presentation to give everyone an idea about what I was trying to do.

Genius Hour ~ Week of May 22 - May 28

This week was spent experimenting on my experiment's procedure. Originally I had planned on leaving my pig skins sitting in the treatments for 5 to 10 minutes. But I soon realized that nothing was happening to them in that time period. So I had moved to 24 hours, but that proved to be too long soaking in the treatments and made them mush. Just like Goldilocks, I decided that putting a few drops of the treatments onto the pig skin and letting them sit for 24 hours would be just right.
This up coming week is going to be just that.

Genius Hour ~ Week of May 15 - May 21

I plan on starting trials next week, I would have started earlier but who knew how long it would take pig skin to defrost?
I spent most of this week researching. The pig skin should break down just like human skin/muscle. I really hope that this produces interesting results, so I can wrap up my weird trifecta of science projects (decomp, bone dissolving, acid/bases baths).

Genius Hour ~ Week of May 8 - May 14

This week was spent trying to figure out what to do for genius hour. The best idea that I have, since all my others didn't pan out (organ decellularization was too expensive and different ways of cleaning blood through crime scene cleaning ways didn't exist [they just remove the affected area all together]), is to do something similar to what I did for my freshman year science project: do different situations effect the decomposition pig skin?
I have the idea of doing water this time, different treatments (pond water vs ocean water vs control [distilled tap water]).

Weekly Reflection for the Week of April 24 - April 30

This week was flurry of learning! We learned about the basics of neurons and domains (ecosystems and communities).
The week started off with a transpiration lab. My group (Emma, Naomi, Taylor, and I ) looked into how salt water (we had the water mimic sea water) would effect transpiration. We have to wrap up the write up for Tuesday and have a board prepared.
To get ready for the AP exam, I am going to type up my notes and pray to any deity to at least give me a 4.

Heart Week (the week of April 10 - April 16)

Heart week! How else could I say it? It was the most fun that I have had in bio this year. We started the week with an episode of "Blood and Guts" that put together the history of heart surgery (which was super interesting and I can't wait to watch the rest of the series during vacation).
The next day was familiarizing ourselves with the outer heart anatomy, the hearts were still slightly frozen at this time so there was little blood to clean up and practically no smell.
Day 2 with the heart was cutting it open and growing familiar with the inner anatomy, and it was so cool! The only part that really grossed me out was cutting through connective tissue (it reminded me of  the  skin between the forefinger and thumb and it just freaked me out once I thought of that) and the smell once it heated up (coupled with the mice, ew!).
Through this week, my love for the heart grew and my familiarity with the anatomy. Also, smooth muscle feels so soft and I wanted to just pet the heart the entire time.