Collecting Data

Today we moved onto a practical. If we want to understand how we vary from each other we must measure the different types of variation that we have.

So- as a class we collected data on: height, shoe size, hand span, tongue rolling ability, eye colour. This was recorded in either an electronic form (if using a computer) or in written form as a table in an exercise book.

The next stage is to process the data to visualise it clearly.

Intro to DNA Revolution

First of all, apologies about the lateness of this post. The school Google connection failed, blocking access to blogger.

Today I introduced the new topic, DNA Revolution.

We can all trace our ancestry back in time. Ultimately we share a lot of our physical traits with our ancestors. For example, if you are of Maori descent then it is likely that you carry some genes from Kupe and other Maori who first colonised New Zealand.

But that is not all. If we go back far enough all humans on the planet share ancestry with the first humans who arose in Africa.

We had an extensive discussion about physical traits.

Climate Change

Bit of a mixed lesson, unfortunately- with the wifi failing in the lab. So, we had to change and look at some book work and then a discussion on climate change.

This means that there is some homework that I need completed by the end of the holiday-

Research the causes of climate change (leading to global warming), including the effect of carbon dioxide.

Then- share all documents so far (Ollie- email me your 365 files, OR try sharing with me- there is a function to do this in 365).

Next term we start a new topic: DNA Revolution!