Although there is no visible growth yet in our corn experiment, the students watered their corn and wrote down their observations in the lab journals.
The students also checked up on their bean beetle experiment, conducted maintenance, and wrote down their observations about what kind of beans the beetles were preferring.
Students also began another experiment related to the beetles. Students are to conduct a germination experiment with the mung beans to determine what effect the beetles have upon the germination of it. They will be comparing the growth of beans not exposed to beetles, beans with eggs laid on them, and beans that the beetles have hatched out of.
They also continued the next part of their C. elegans experiment by adding C. elegans to their plates of E. coli. In the next few days, students will be monitoring the reproductive rate of the C. elegans.
A new experiment was started today as well. The students will be growing Sordaria and then counting certain patterns of the spores to calculate the rate of crossing over in the fungus species.
The students also did two simulations today. One simulation was done to demonstrate the process of meiosis and the other simulations was done to simulate the inheritance pattern when multiple alleles are involved. Like the previous Mars Meloos and tribbles simulations, in the Rexies simulation students were given a list a fictional creatures to breed with and they were asked to determine the inheritance pattern and the genotypes of the original individuals.