Lab Poster

This is a picture of the poster that we made from our own lab that we made up. Our lab was to see how your heart rate changed playing wii tennis, and playing regular tennis.

Sheep Brain Dissection

This is a picture of the brain that our group dissected. We cut it down the mid-section of the brain like a bread loaf. 

We have been talking about the brain in our class and actually dissecting the brain let us see the parts of the brain that we were talking about such as the white matter and gray matter that you can see in the picture above. When dissecting the brain, we had to first remove the cover off of the brain, and that is the shell like coating that you see on the top of the picture. It was weird at first to see a real brain, and that all the pictures and things that you see of brains, it actually really looks like that. With all the the learning of brains in class it's really nice to get the opportunity to see the real thing, and it helps you to see the anatomy of an actual brain.
When dissecting the brain, we first got all the tools that we needed. We got a tray, rubber mat, scissors, scalpel, and probe. we then figured out in our group which way we were going to cut our brain, and we decided to cut it down the mid section. It came out pretty good and we saw everything really clear! We went around after we were done and looked at everyone else's brains and saw the different cuts that different groups did. It was a fun dissection and I would definitely do something like that again.

Here are a couple pictures of the other brains that the other groups dissected.

Parkinson's Disease

Here is a link to my Parkinson's Disease Presentation.  Parkinson's Disease is a very interesting thing to learn about! I hope you Enjoy it!! :) :)

http://prezi.com/sgaycgztp13c/parkinsons-diease/

Leech Neurophysiology Lab

We have been working on a Leech Neurophysiology Lab in class on our computers. Like Our teacher said, it would be nice to actually do this in class, but all the equipment and the things we need would be way too expensive. It was pretty cool to do it on the computer, because even with the virtual one it seemed real. The things we did with all the equipment was what we would have done hands on if we would have had everything that we needed.
Equipment:

• Leech Tank
• Dissection tank
• Scalpel
• pins
• scissors
• forceps
• probe
• 20% ethanol
• Leech tongs
• Dissection Microscope
• Micromanipulator
• Oscilloscope
• A leech
• feather

What we pretty much did in this lab was dissect a leech all the way down to look at it's nervous cells that are responsible for collecting touch information from it's skin to it's brain.
When we first started the lab, it introduced all the supplies that we would be using at first. I then inserted the leech tongs into the beaker, and anesthetize the leech. I then stretched the leech out and pinned both the anterior and posterior sides down. Then i got the scalpel and cut the leech open, got the forceps, and opened the incision. Next step was to grab the probe and remove the guts and connective tissues. I then put it under the microscope, made an incision with the scalpel and removed it with the forceps. I then got the scalpel again and cut a section, and pinned it down to the mat. We then looked at it under the microscope and made another incision in the sinus, then another. ( It looked ind of like an X after we were done making incisions). I then clicked on the micro manipulator, probed a cell, then i injected the cell with dye and looked at it underneath the UV switch.

This is the graph that tells you what your cell is at the end of the lab:

This is a link to the virtual lab!
http://www.hhmi.org/biointeractive/vlabs/neurophysiology/index.html

Chewing Lab

In this class, we did a chewing lab to see what foods took longer to chew, and how long it actually took someone to chew something. It was a pretty neat thing to do, especially being one of the test subjects, eating all of the yummy food! :) We had people bring in many different foods to test. The person I just so happened to chose was Whitney, and the graphs I did of her were her PB and celery, pickle, and chips and guac. We had a EKG plugged into the computer and had electrode tabs on the test subject and cords running from the tab to the EKG box. When making my graph, I simply just went to the highest point on each graph, and the lowest point and subtracted the two to get the averages.

Here is one of the graphs that I used to get the data from:

Here is a graph of Whitney's Data:

This was a pretty fun lab to do. It was cool to compare the different foods and see what foods take more to chew than others!

Bones

      As you know, bones are a huge part of your body and play a major part in the things you do everyday. Your bones are pretty much the main thing that run your body. Your bones are connected to everything, and they help you move to do the everyday things that you do.
       There is more to bones than just bones though. There is skeletal cartilage which contains no blood vessels, and is surrounded by the perichondrium that resists outward expansion. There are three types of cartilage and they are- hyaline, elastic, and fibrocartilage.  There are also different growths of cartilage. There is appositional, and interstitial. Appositional is where the cells in the perichondrium secrete matrix are against the external face of existing cartilage. Interstitial is where the lacunae-bound chondrocytes inside the cartilage divide and secrete new matrix, expanding the cartilage from within. Calification of cartilage occurs during normal bone growth and during old age.

     There are two classifications of the bones and they are Axial skeleton, and Appendicular skeleton. Axial are bones of the skull, vertebral column, and bones that are in the rib cage. Appendicular are bones that are the upper and lower limbs, shoulder, and hip bones. There are also bones that are classified by their shape. There are long bones, which are longer than they are wide, short bones, which are cube shaped bones like the wrist and ankle. They are also bones that form within tendons. Flat bones are thin flattened bones that are curved a little. Mostly in the sternum and skull. Irregular bones are bones with complicated shapes such as the vertebrae and the hip. 

      Bones have many functions. Bones are defiantly here for support, forming the frames that support the body and protect soft organs that are in the body. They Protect. The provide a case that protects the brain, spinal cord, and vital organs. The help you to move, providing levers for your muscles. Believe it or not, your bones also store minerals, mostly calcium and phosphorus. Your blood cells also form in your bones. Hematopoiesis occurs in the marrow cavities of your bones. 

      Your bones can be classified as two different of textures. There is compact bone, which is the dense outer layer, and there is spongy bone which is honeycomb trabeculae filled with yellow bone marrow.

Your bones have membranes. Periosteum, and Endosteum. Periosteum is a double layered protective membrane. THe outer fibrous layer is dense regular connective tissue, the inner osteogenic layer is made up of osteoblasts and osteoclasts. It is richly supplied with nerve fibers, blood, and lymphatic vessels that enter the bone via nutrient for mania. They are secured to underlying bone by Sharpey's fibers. Endosteum is a delicate membrane covering internal surfaces of the bone. Red marrow is also in your bones. In babies, it is found in the medullary cavity and all the areas of spongy bone. In adults, it is found in the dipole of flat bones, and the head of the femur and humerus. 

      Your "Bones" begin to develop at week 8 of embryo development. 

Muscle project

For our project on muccles, I made a poster on the Neuromuscular Junction. The Neuromuscular Junction's Function is to transmit signals from the motor neuron to the skeletal muscle fibre quickly and reliably, to ensure percise control of skeletal muscle contraction, and voluntary movement.


Here are a few pictures of my poster :)