This activity is a lab where students design an experiment to test the rate of photosynthesis. Students will analyze data,write a report using the scientific method, and apply results to current environmental issues.

In this activity, students will investigate how much chlorophyll is in olive oil using a Varnier Spectrometer. Students will measure and analyze the visible light absorbance spectra of three standard olive oils obtained from any supermarket: extra virgin, regular, and light.

We will cover fundamentals of ecology, considering Earth as an integrated dynamic system. Topics include coevolution of the biosphere, geosphere, atmosphere and oceans; photosynthesis and respiration; the hydrologic, carbon and nitrogen cycles. We will examine the flow of energy and materials through ecosystems; regulation of the distribution and abundance of organisms; structure and function of ecosystems, including evolution and natural selection; metabolic diversity; productivity; trophic dynamics; models of population growth, competition, mutualism and predation. This course is designated as Communication-Intensive; instruction and practice in oral and written communication provided. Biology is a recommended prerequisite.

We will cover fundamentals of ecology, considering Earth as an integrated dynamic system. Topics include coevolution of the biosphere, geosphere, atmosphere and oceans; photosynthesis and respiration; the hydrologic, carbon and nitrogen cycles. We will examine the flow of energy and materials through ecosystems; regulation of the distribution and abundance of organisms; structure and function of ecosystems, including evolution and natural selection; metabolic diversity; productivity; trophic dynamics; models of population growth, competition, mutualism and predation. This course is designated as Communication-Intensive; instruction and practice in oral and written communication provided. Biology is a recommended prerequisite.

Students learn how rooftop gardens help the environment and the lives of people, especially in urban areas. They gain an understanding of how plants reduce the urban heat island effect, improve air quality, provide agriculture space, reduce energy consumption and increase the aesthetic quality of cities. This draws upon the science of heat transfer (conduction, convection, radiation, materials, color) and ecology (plants, shade, carbon dioxide, photosynthesis), and the engineering requirements for rooftop gardens. In the associated activity, students apply their scientific knowledge to model and measure the effects of green roofs.

This classroom activity introduces students to energy flow through organisms, producers & photosynthesis, and consumers & respiration.

This resource is a video abstract of a research paper created by Research Square on behalf of its authors. It provides a synopsis that's easy to understand, and can be used to introduce the topics it covers to students, researchers, and the general public. The video's transcript is also provided in full, with a portion provided below for preview:

"Glaciers and ice sheets may seem dead and empty to the naked eye, but the dust that coats them, cryoconite, is a hotspot for microbes and microbe-driven biogeochemical cycling. However, little is known about the geographical diversity in cryoconite microbial communities. Most cryoconite research focuses on polar microbial communities, and reports on Asia’s high mountain glaciers are rare. A recent metagenomics study found key metabolic and light harvesting differences between polar and Asian alpine cryoconite microbiota. The Asian cryoconite community had more abundant genes for denitrification, suggesting that denitrification is enhanced there compared to polar regions. While Asian cryoconite is dominated by multiple cyanobacterial lineages that possess phycoerythrin, a green-light harvesting protein, polar cryoconite is dominated by a single cyanobacterial species (_Phormidesmis priestleyi_) that lacks phycoerythrin..."

The rest of the transcript, along with a link to the research itself, is available on the resource itself.

Students learn about energy flow in food webs, including the roles of the sun, producers, consumers and decomposers in the energy cycle. They model a food web and create diagrams of food webs using their own drawings and/or images from nature or wildlife magazines. Students investigate the links between the sun, plants and animals, building their understanding of the web of nutrient dependency and energy transfer.

Students learn about energy and nutrient flow in various biosphere climates and environments. They learn about herbivores, carnivores, omnivores, food chains and food webs, seeing the interdependence between producers, consumers and decomposers. Students are introduced to the roles of the hydrologic (water), carbon, and nitrogen cycles in sustaining the worlds' ecosystems so living organisms survive. This lesson is part of a series of six lessons in which students use their growing understanding of various environments and the engineering design process, to design and create their own model biodome ecosystems.

In a multi-week experiment, student groups gather data from the photobioreactors that they build to investigate growth conditions that make algae thrive best. Using plastic soda bottles, pond water and fish tank aerators, they vary the amount of carbon dioxide (or nutrients or sunlight, as an extension) available to the microalgae. They compare growth in aerated vs. non-aerated conditions. They measure growth by comparing the color of their algae cultures in the bottles to a color indicator scale. Then they graph and analyze the collected data to see which had the fastest growth. Students learn how plants biorecycle carbon dioxide into organic carbon (part of the carbon cycle) and how engineers apply their understanding of this process to maximize biofuel production.

Objectives:
- To teach students how different conditions can change seed and sprout growth.
- To introduce photosynthesis.
- To investigate the growing stages of a seed to a plant.
- To introduce the concept of a hypothesis.

This resource is a video abstract of a research paper created by Research Square on behalf of its authors. It provides a synopsis that's easy to understand, and can be used to introduce the topics it covers to students, researchers, and the general public. The video's transcript is also provided in full, with a portion provided below for preview:

"Chloroplasts harness sunlight to power all the processes that help plants grow. Like engines, they must carefully balance their fuel to run efficiently. In plants, that’s the ratio of ATP to NADPH, two forms of fuel produced by photosynthesis. But scientists have long known that ATP/NADPH ratios in chloroplasts fall short of the value required for plants to turn CO₂ into sugars. To find out how plants overcome this imbalance, researchers tracked ATP in Arabidopsis plants in real time using a fluorescent protein sensor. They found that immature chloroplasts in young seedlings imported cytosolic ATP for chloroplast biogenesis, using an abundance of ATP transporter proteins to do the job, but mature chloroplasts downregulated these transporters to minimize ATP importation. Instead of importing ATP to maintain fuel balance, chloroplasts exported NADPH in the form of malate..."

The rest of the transcript, along with a link to the research itself, is available on the resource itself.

nanimate Life is an open textbook covering a very traditional biological topic, botany, in a non-traditional way. Rather than a phylogenetic approach, going group by group, the book considers what defines organisms and examines four general areas of their biology: structure (size, shape, composition and how it comes to be); reproduction (including sex when present); energy and material needs, acquisition and manipulations; and finally their interactions with conditions and with other organisms including agricultural interactions between plants and people. Although much of the text is devoted to vascular plants, the book comparatively considers ‘EBA = everything but animals’ (hence the title): plants, photosynthetic organisms that are not plants (‘algae’, as well as some bacteria and archaebacteria), fungi, and ‘fungal-like’ organisms. The book includes brief ‘fact sheets’ of fifty-nine organisms/groups that biologists should be aware of, ranging from the very familiar (corn, yeast, pines) to the unfamiliar (cryptophytes, diatoms, late-blight of potato). These groups reflect the diversity of inanimate life.

This updated edition was published in July 2022 and includes corrections, revisions, additional figures, and fact-sheets for several more groups.

In this inquiry lab, students design and conduct simple experiments using elodea and Bromothymol blue to determine whether plants consume or release carbon dioxide in the process of photosynthesis. Students will record their data which will be used to conclude whether carbon dioxide was consumed or released by the elodea.

During this lab, students learn about the life cycle of corals, including how they grow and reproduce. Students consider the chemistry of seawater and the importance of the symbiotic relationship between corals and zooxanthellae in the formation of coral reefs. They blow CO2 through calcium hydroxide (limewater) to model how respiration assists coral in precipitating calcium carbonate. Students also build on the coral polyp models they made in Lab 2 to demonstrate coral growth, reproduction, and reef formation.

(Note: this resource was added to OER Commons as part of a batch upload of over 2,200 records. If you notice an issue with the quality of the metadata, please let us know by using the 'report' button and we will flag it for consideration.)

This NetLogo model of leaf photosynthesis shows the macroscopic outcome of the reaction.

Photosynthesis is a process by which plants synthesize glucose and oxygen in presence of sunlight through light dependent reactions by utilization of sunlight, water to synthesize oxygen, ATP and NADPH and light-independent reactions to synthesize carbon dioxide and carbohydrates. Cellular respiration is a metabolic pathway that breaks down glucose through glycolysis, pyruvate oxidation, citric acid / Krebs cycle and oxidative phosphorylation. Primary producers produce energy and consumers derive energy from primary producers. Primary productivity is the accumulation of energy in form of biomass. Integrating biological science and mathematics helps to understand how differential regulation of factors impacting metabolic pathways and processes impact primary productivity.

Students observe demonstrations, and build and evaluate simple models to understand the greenhouse effect, the role of increased greenhouse gas concentration in global warming, and the implications of global warming theory for engineers, themselves and the Earth. In an associated literacy activity, students learn how a bill becomes law and research global warming legislation.

Objectives:
*Learn about the importance of the sun for plants
*Introduction to photosynthesis

This unit covers the processes of photosynthesis, extinction, biomimicry and bioremediation. In the first lesson on photosynthesis, students learn how engineers use the natural process of photosynthesis as an exemplary model of a complex yet efficient process for converting solar energy to chemical energy or distributing water throughout a system. In the next lesson on species extinction, students learn that it is happening at an alarming rate. Students discover that the destruction of habitat is the main reason many species are threatened and how engineers are trying to stop this habitat destruction. The third lesson introduces students to the idea of biomimicry or looking to nature for engineering ideas. And, in the fourth and final lesson, students learn about a specialty branch of engineering called bioremediation the use of living organisms to aid in the clean up of pollutant spills.