Tuesday, November 20, 2007

Kat Vanderzwan - Nov. 15/2007 - 3/3

What we did:
  • Kyle drew a picture of a plant cell on the board, and a picture of a chloroplast. We went over his drawing and reviewed most of the stuff we learned about chloroplasts in grade 10.
  • We talked about the thylakoid, grana, stroma and chlorophyll. The thylakoids are the site of "light independant" reactions of photosynthesis. Stacks of thylakoids form the grana, and the grana are connected by stroma.
  • We also talked about light and dark reactions. Light reactions or light dependant reactions convert sunlight into chemical energy. Dark reactions or light independant reactions require the products of light reactions, they take them and preform further chemical processes on them. There is two dark reactions The Calvin-Benson Cycle and carbon fixation.
  • We watched a short movie on photosynthesis.

Thoughts and Opinions

We had a double block today and those usually go pretty slowly, and so now that I think back to it I have a hard time differenciating between the two classes. I think that today was useful in reminding us what we already know, but at the same time a little bit tedious because we already knew some of the stuff. Today was a slow class because some of it was review, but I was a little suprised at how much kids in the class forgot from last year. We did learn some new stuff today, but I'm doing this like 5 days later so I'm having a hard time remembering and I might have added stuff that we learned on Friday, Monday or Tuesday. Oh well. Personally I think that this topic is pretty interesting and I wonder why someone looked at a plant and was like "I WONDER WHY IT'S GREEN!?" because it seems like one of those things that just are, y'know? But who knew that there was so much stuff to it? Photosynthesis is pretty complex.

Above and Beyond

here is a song i found about photosynthesis, im pretty sure that we're at a deeper level then this song is. but hey, it's a good time!

http://youtube.com/watch?v=PIvn7b4LbMc&feature=related

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