BIO 101 MBCC Exploring Life and Lab Safety Questions

General Biology 101 w/ Lab Name: Online Lab Exercise: Lab Safety and the Scientific Method In the online lab environment, our lab exercises will employ different videos and online simulations which you will view and later answer questions on. Fear not, I will do my best to keep these online exercises as fun as the in-person labs would have been! For this lab exercise, type all responses directly in this document and re-submit on Blackboard by the due date/time outlined in the online lab schedule. Feel free to handwrite if you are able to scan the document. Part I: Laboratory Safety. Before beginning the lab component of this course (or any lab-based course), we must review important aspects of lab safety. Please watch the lab safety video linked below. If we were able to have our course face-toface, we would have watched this video before completing the MassBay Lab Safety Contract. Watch Me: https://youtu.be/VRWRmIEHr3A Answer the following True or False questions correlating to Lab Safety. Please highlight or bold either T or F. 1. Shorts and short skirts are appropriate to be worn in the lab room. T / F 2. Tank tops, baggy clothes, and loose hair are all acceptable in the lab room. T / F 3. Sandals and opened toed shoes are permitted in the lab room. T / F 4. Students are allowed to have a snack and drink some water in the lab room. T / F 5. Cell phones are allowed in the laboratory. T / F 6. Wearing gloves, goggles, lab coats, or other pieces of PPE are optional in the lab room. T / F 7. Tasting chemicals and solutions is acceptable in the lab room. T / F 8. Pipetting via your mouth is an acceptable lab procedure. T / F 9. The instructor of the lab course has the right to dismiss any student from the lab room who is acting inappropriately. T / F 10. Students wearing inappropriate lab attire will be either asked to change or will be dismissed from the lab room. T / F Select one answer for the following multiple-choice questions regarding Lab Safety hypothetical scenarios: 1. If you do not understand a direction or part of a lab procedure (especially using chemicals), you should: a. Figure it out as you do the lab. b. Try several methods until something works. c. Ask the instructor before proceeding. d. Skip it and go on to the next part. 2. After completing an experiment, all chemical wastes should be: a. Left at your lab station for the next class. b. Disposed of according to your instructor’s directions. c. Dumped in the sink. d. Taken home. 1 3. If a piece of equipment is not working properly, stop, turn it off, and tell… a. The custodian. b. Your lab partners. c. Your best friend in the class. d. The science instructor. Part II: The Scientific Method. The term science can be defined as an approach to understand the world around us. More specifically, science is usually defined as the systematic study of the structure and behavior of the physical and natural world. The Scientific Method is a methodology often used by scientists when conducting research. Please watch the following video outlining the steps of the Scientific Method. Watch Me: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BVfI1wat2y8 Answer the following questions: 1. What are the 6 main steps of the Scientific Method outlined in this video? 2. What is a Hypothesis? 3. What is an Experiment? Why do we perform experiments? 4. What is Data? 5. What is a Conclusion? 6. Do the 6 main steps of the Scientific Method always occur in the same order? 7. Consider the following situation: You are planting a garden and are curious as to how often you should water the plants within the garden. Create a hypothesis relating to how water will affect plant growth. 8. A theory in science is an encompassing deduction based on many individual conclusions in the same field. It takes many years for scientists to develop a theory. How does a theory differ from a scientific conclusion? 2 9. Determine whether or not the following statements are hypotheses, conclusions, or theories: a. The data show that vaccines protect people from disease. _______________ b. All living things are made of cells. _______________ c. If I brush my teeth twice a day, then I will not get cavities. ______________________ 10. Design an Experiment! Consider the follow observation: You wake up one morning to find that your car will not start. Develop a hypothesis as to why your car will not start, and design an experiment you may execute to test this hypothesis! Part III: Employing the Scientific Method: Examining Elephant Communication. Now that we have examined the aspects of the scientific method, let us now examine a case study which explores whether elephants are able to detect, interpret and respond to signals delivered via underground vibrations. Biologist Caitlin O’Connell designed this experiment to determine whether elephants would be able to detect and respond to underground vibrations being sent as an alarm call. This case study is able to be viewed by opening the link pasted below: https://www.biointeractive.org/classroom-resources/interactive-case-study-studying-elephant-communication After opening the link above, select the green box titled “Launch Interactive”. This will prompt an additional window to open where the interactive simulation will run. Press play on the screen and begin! As you progress through the video simulation, you will be prompted to answer questions regarding the scientific method and other aspects of experimental design. Answer these questions to the best of your ability. You will not be graded on the completion/accuracy of these questions within the simulation. This section of today’s lab exercise is to show you how the scientific method may be used in a wide array of scientific investigations. 1. After you have worked through this simulation, describe how you would design an experiment to determine whether elephants can detect and interpret the calls of other elephants through the ground. If you are having trouble with this scenario, think back to your response for Part II #10. 3 Part IV: Preparing a Lab Report Typically following the completion of an experiment, students would have composed and submitted a lab report. For those students who are STEM majors, you most likely have or will soon become quite familiar with the process of writing a lab report. Those of you who are not, or have not written a lab report in the past, there is no need to panic. The following sheet outlines the most basic structure of a biology lab report. 1. Lab reports should always begin with a Title Page. The title page should include: – The title of the experiment or the study. – Student’s name and instructor’s name. – The course number and institution name. – The date. – Usually, all this info should be centered on its own page! 2. After the title page, there is an Abstract. The abstract is a small paragraph or two which provides a brief summary of the content of the lab report. The most important part of the abstract is to get the reader’s attention! 3. Next is the Introduction section. The introduction provides the framework for the report and shows the reader (and the instructor) that the purpose of the study was well understood. In the introduction, the writer should: – Give a broad summary of the what the lab is about – Give a summary of the background information on this topic – State the significance of the lab (explain why it was done and why it is important) – List your hypothesis/predictions – Never use I/we/he/she/they in an introduction or a lab report. 4. After the introduction comes the Material and Methods section. In this section you should list all of the important materials you used in the lab. Be sure to describe each material used and be specific when talking about amounts of substances, times, and measurements, and always include units for these measurements. After this, you then need to list all the procedures (steps) completed for each part of the lab. This section should be detailed enough that whoever reads this lab report will be able to duplicate the exercise. This section should be written in the past tense. 5. Next is the Results section. In this section, outline all of the data and results accumulated in the experiment! Do not make any conclusions or assumptions about the data here, just state the results. Include tables, graphs, and any other visuals to help portray these results. This section should be written in the past tense. 6. After this, include the Conclusions/Discussion section last. In this final section, you should be making conclusions based off of the results you had from your experiment! State whether or not your results support or refute your hypothesis. Refer back to your results section to back up your conclusions. In this section, also discuss your results (explain why you were or were not surprised with your findings, relate and compare your findings to the results of previous studies). 4 Now that this lab course will be conducted in a remote setting, we will not be conducting experiments in our lab room. Rather than compile a lab report for each lab exercise, students will review the formatting requirements for a lab report. Please open the following scientific journal linked below. This scientific report examines the impact which the Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill of 2010 had on sea turtle mortality in the Gulf of Mexico. Open Me: https://www.int-res.com/articles/esr2017/33/n033p039.pdf The journal provided here offers much more detail than what would have been expected in our lab room, however, this topic is extremely interesting! After opening and reading through this journal, please answer the following questions. These questions will ask you to examine the structure of this report rather than answer indepth questions on the topics being addressed. 1. Read the abstract of this journal. Does this short section attract sufficient attention to persuade you to continue reading the remainder of the report? 2. After reading the introduction section of this report, summarize the overall study being conducted. Do the authors of this report provide sufficient background information and detail the significance of their study? 3. Continue reading through the Materials and Methods, Results, and Conclusion sections of this report. Do you believe the authors followed the basic structure of a lab report as stated on the previous page of this lab exercise? 4. After reviewing the information provided by the authors, list some of the negative impacts which oil exposure has on sea turtles. 5

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