Spring Break 2012

For this year's Spring Break, I stayed home like always. I slept in every day, ate a hearty breakfast and messed around with mis hermanos y hermanas. I had baseball practice every day and was working hard and getting better while others were building up calories on some paradisiacal beach. I had a blast while playing family kickball and going to see the Mars exhibit at the museum for some physics extra credit. The highlight of my spring break, though, is, no doubt, my mama's cooking. Every child got to pick a dinner so every day of the week we had one of my mom's best dishes. Some of her specialties included pasta lasagna, french bread pizza, chicken pot pie, potatoes and ham, sweet and sour chicken, and the well-known grilled cheese, ALL of them homeade. I, however, decided to feature my dad and chose his spectacular paninis. I got to go to two Griffins games, the second being in one of the awesome suites with my youth group from church with unlimited free food. My uncle and cousin came up for my cousin's birthday from Indiana and stayed for a couple days. It was a really enjoyable spring break and I loved the lack of school.

Bees' Personalities

So I googled "biology news" and saw something about bees having personalities. I thought it would be pretty cool so I clicked on it. Apparently, bees differ in their desires for action and thrill. The study said that bees that left the hive to look for a new one were 3.4 times more likely to also be the bees who left the hive looking for food. This evidence implies that the bees gene characteristics could be somewhat like ours and we have more in common with them than we though. Who knew? I didn't even think they had feelings...

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/03/120308143201.htm

Sophomores: Diffusion, Osmois, and Active Transport

For all you sophomores who need to learn and remember simple diffusion, facilitated diffusion, osmosis, and active transport:

Simple Diffusion--simply things moving across a membrane. Think of a pool: if you throw a rock in, it breaks the surface and sinks to the bottom. As simple as that.This happens naturally because things want to move from a high concentration to a low concentration, kind of getting away from themselves and trying to spread out evenly.
Facilitated Diffusion--the same thing as simple diffusion except the objects going across the membrane can't do it themselves. The membrane is built so that many things can't go across by themselves. To do this job, there are channel proteins who do just that: they form a channel so that specific things can cross them. Ex. Aquaporins are just channel proteins for water, which sometimes has hard times crossing membranes.
Osmosis--the diffusion of water.
Active Transport--This is the same process as the two diffusions with an exception: things are moving against nature so there needs to be energy put in to move them. Ex. Things moving from low concentration to high concentration is not allowed so to move across the membrane, energy (ATP) needs to be burned, kind of pulling it inside while it's trying to stay outside.

To remember, think Simple Diffusion is very simple, just crossing a membrane, high to low concentration. Facilitated Diffusion just means the things moving are using a "facility" (channel protein) to help them move across. Osmosis: sorry, but I think you just need to know it means water diffusing. Active Transport can be remembered exactly by its name--when you are being active it takes energy and the thing that's going on is "transport" of objects. So, "actively transporting" is diffusion that takes energy to go against the grain.

Pick an organelle, any organelle...

If I were to choose to be any organelle, I would probably have to choose the cytoplasm. It's pretty awesome partly because it's so unique. How many other organelles fill up the unclaimed room in the cell? Yeah, none. Also, the cytoplasm's job is extremely necessary to the cell's function. Imagine if the Nucleus, Golgi body, and lysosomes were surrounded in bricks. That wouldn't work out too well. The cytoplasm's jelly-like material functions as a transportation medium for all the jobs inside the cell. Without it, the mRNA and ribosomes would never be able to move around freely to make proteins and the vesicles would have no chance at transporting things. I think that would be pretty sweet to simply help everybody else do their jobs knowing that your presence is crucial to the life of the cell. The cytoplasm is a very necessary (or very frictionless, whichever) organelle and I think many people kind of forget about it.

Enzyme Lab

I thought the enzyme lab was a good lab to start off with; it wasn't too difficult but it required measurements and even a titration. It was great for displaying the effect of an enzyme (catalase) on a substrate (H2O2) except it worked too well. It seemed that every time we tried something, something else seemed to be wrong. I think the final prediction was that the enzyme was still too concentrated and it sped up the reaction too much. It is a bummer that it never worked as well as it should have. Our data is pretty skewed--the baseline took a few mL but EVERYTHING else took one drop. I think the message came across well though--there was a reaction happening because of the enzyme and it has helped me to understand the concept.

The Upcoming Semester

For this AP biology semester, I'm looking forward to a fun science class. I am excited for a few labs that will be intense and maybe a dissection. I'm also looking forward to learning about evolution because I haven't learned anything about that before. I am worried about all the outside reading and responsibility for learning the material on our own. I am not excited to spend so much time outside of class preparing for the AP test. There really isn't a topic that is looming over me but I can't say that I am excited for them all. We will be relearning cell reproduction and the stages of that and I'm not exactly excited to do all that again.

All About Me

Hello. I'm Decker Richmond, a senior at Sparta High School. I come from a family of nine with two older brothers, two younger brothers, and two younger sisters. I play tennis, basketball, and baseball. I will be attending Brigham Young University in Provo, UT this fall and will be pursuing a career in engineering. I am not completely certain which type of engineering I will be but I have narrowed it down to mechanical, electrical, or chemical.

I am taking AP Biology, to be honest, because I want another weighted class. I do think this class will be very interesting and I am looking forward to earning college credit towards BYU. I like science and am excited for this semester.

From this class, I am expecting to better understand the topics involved in biology and to learn enough to pass the AP test and receive college credit.