S103 Discovering Science Diary

Block 4


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Biology Glossary

19th April

Although I finished this block ages ago, am just finishing off TMA04, which has to be in at the beginning of May.

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Nightmare!

2nd March

The second soup fungus attempt is coming along splendidly! Yuck! Green dumplings!

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22nd February

I've finished the block and have (roughly) done the TMA question from it. I need to tidy up a few things before I go onto the next block though (and the dreaded energy!). The block was enjoyable and the CD-ROM activities interesting. Although I'm not too hot on understanding the GPP and NPP stuff - I got the gist of the finch beaks OK. Having read so much about birds and their struggle to reproduce and survive - and, after finding a dead sparrow in the garden this morning - I'm off to buy a bird table and some nice nuts.

Yesterday, I threw out Fungus Experiment 1. The hideous stuff was growing all over the top of the container (under the cling film) and trying to get out! Pretty useless - so, today I emptied a tin of Heinz into a new container. Hopefully, higher class and prettier fungi will grow in that!!

15th February

The 2nd lot of mailing arrived yesterday, but I already had the block 4 book (having bought it in case I ran out of work!), so had actually made a slight start on this block already. I've started my biology glossary notebook - and am also tranferring that to a web page. So many BIG words already! All is interesting though.
We have to grow fungi on top of some soup. I spilt mine and think I've ruined the experiment already, as the clingfilm is crumpled a bit and might've let in some outside air. Also, the container is somewhat suspect, as I shan't be able to measure the volume of air inside all that accurately, as the sides of the container slope. So, do I keep at the one I've started, or do I pay out another 19p for another tin of soup and start again?s103soup.jpg - 12961 Bytes

Block 4

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Block 4: Unity within diversity. Contents

What is life?
Life arises from the living
Reproduction and growth: the life cycle
Metabolism

The cell: unity within diversity

A typical cell
The eukaryotic cell cycle
Mitosis
Variations on a theme
Diversity: the spice of life
Species
Recognising and labelling species
Classifying species

Biodiversity
Estimating species numbers
Species turnover
Why does biodiversity matter?

Reproduction
Asexual reproduction
Sexual reproduction

Ecology: relationships between species

The biology of populations
Population size
Quantifying life histories
The dynamics of populations
The holly leaf miner
Adaptation and evolution
Evolution through natural selection
Darwin and natural selection
Natural selection in the guppy
Other influences on evolution

The evolution of clutch size in birds: a case study in natural selection
Variation and clutch size
An hypothesis about the evolution of clutch size
The cost of reproduction
Variation in clutch size among bird species
Fitness
Evolution and natural selection

Levels of explanation in biology