What I learned in the Lab Biology. Informative Essay Example
This semester's Lab Biology has been interesting, to say the least, some things I have learned are about the scientific method, how biology is used in the real world, the ecosystem structure and function, the chemistry of life, about energy and life, and exchanging materials with the biosphere.
I have learned many things this semester in Lab Biology Honors so let's start from the beginning. At the start of this semester, I learned about the scientific method which I know will help me create and complete experiments, labs, etc. Alongside this, I learned about Claim/Evidence/Reasoning which shows me how to explain what had happened during the scientific method. And what type of biology class would this be if I did not learn what biology itself was, biology is the study of life and it is used in the medical field, agriculture, etc. Although I learned about biology I also jumped into the broader idea of science which is a way to explain why the world is the way it is. Science can be proved using the scientific method. A branch of “science” that is fake science is called pseudoscience where people use faith and assumptions to explain why the world is the way it is but without any evidence to back it up.
Now think about where we live, is it a house you might ask, although we do live in a house we also live in an ecosystem. One of 431 ecosystems around the world to be exact. An ecosystem is where biotic and abiotic factors coexist through numerous amounts of networked relationships. Ecosystems even have their own energy flow, chemical cycles, food webs, and food chains. Populations of organisms around the world can be affected by the conditions and relationships in the ecosystems and vice versa. For example, if the population of organisms on Earth gets too high and the Earth and ecosystems cannot support it the population will ultimately crash.
To be fair this is a biology class but to understand biology you need to understand the chemistry behind it and this is exactly what I did this semester. As I learned that the cells are the basic unit of life and that these tiny little things do biological tasks in an organism using chemical reactions that go off constantly. These chemical reactions are caused by molecules that are made up of atoms interacting with each other to make a different substance. Organisms have four main types of molecules or to be more specific macromolecules, these go as followed carbohydrates which interact with the cells energy and cell structure, lipids which make up a huge portion of the cell membrane and also interact with the cells energy, proteins which are the structural parts of cells, enzymes, and they also act as messengers and the recipient of messages, last but not least the fourth macromolecule is nucleic acids which make up DNA and RNA.
Continuing on from organisms, let's jump into the idea of the energy that all organisms need. Energy comes from the sun and inorganic chemicals in the environment. Energy flows down a food chain or food web going from the producer to a secondary consumer to a primary consumer, then finally to the decomposer. Throughout this process, energy is also being released as heat. Almost everything an organism does use energy this includes metabolism and biosynthesis. Decomposition of organisms releases free energy. There are catalysts called enzymes that speed up chemical reactions. There are many types of enzymes and for some of them, their job is to break down or digest food in an organism's digestive system.
The last thing I learned this semester is how materials exchange within the environment. This includes the diffusion of molecules that happen within a cell and its membrane that is semi-permeable meaning only certain things can pass through it. The general idea of diffusion is that things move from highly concentrated areas to a lower concentrated area. Now if the cell membrane won’t let a molecule pass through with just normal transportation facilitated transportation is used where certain proteins help with getting the molecule through the membrane. Gas can also be diffused or exchanged. For example, if living things had a larger surface area that allowed oxygen to enter the organism would simply dry out, now this is the complete opposite of what happens with living things in the water because they need a larger surface area to get as much oxygen they can since water has a lower concentration of oxygen that the outside land atmosphere.
After reading this I hope you get at least a slight idea of what I’ve learned about this very knowledge packed semester.
