Dermal Tissue Systems make me jealous...

Ok. this is a combination of the three posts I've made on my own before I could post to the class blog.

Friday, February 26, 2010

Today i heard the phrase, her/his "periderm is worse than " his/her "bite". (I can't remember the gender.) Puns make the world go round. With that in mind, I scoured the internet for biology puns...

http://www.xs4all.nl/~jcdverha/scijokes/4_3.html#subindex

I think some of them are just downright nerdy, don't you?

Of course, the best puns are the ones you come up with yourself...so let me take a crack at this:

"What did the DNA say to the RNA? We don't need U here."

Ok, I can't think of any others. :(

Perhaps I'm not cut out to be a comedian.

Oh well, pass me a gamma-radiation sterilized scalpel and I'll make a wet-slide of that apple I wanted to eat.

Thursday, February 25, 2010

Roots. Roots seem to be the best thing since sliced bread for plants. Not only do they absorb nutrients and water, they can perform so many other functions. They can store nutrients and organic materials. They keep the plant from blowing away and the topsoil from vanishing with the wind. They can be big and sociopathic(taproots) or small and in such numbers as to make them just clumps of awesome. And they can be tasty. Onions, potatoes, stuff like that. All roots. Ginger. Root. Root beer. No brainer, comes from a root. Seriously, we should get some of these. We should all lay down roots. (literally).

Or not. I like moving around too much to do that.

Dermal Tissue Systems make me jealous...

Ok, it might just be me, but plants have WAYY better defense than we do. We have...skin. And when that skin tears..it just gets patched up. Plants(like trees) get BARK! WOOD! Way better than our little fleshy stuff.

I just can't help thinking that animals got the short end of the evolutionary stick. Heterotrophic. Dependence on sexual reproduction. Soft skin.

We don't even get pretty flowers on our heads!

Seriously...we should revolt and become sentient plants. We could be lazy all day, we could make our own food, we wouldn't have messy relationship issues because we never even have to see the organisms we mate with...

That'd be simple as 1, 2, 3.

Of course...it'd be pretty boring too.

How to become an author...

Alright, here's the scoop. To participate, float me an e-mail that you would like to start contributing to the class blog and an e-mail address to use for that account. In that invitation, you will be prompted to create a Google account. If you already have one, then fantastic. You are a step ahead! Sign in and voila! Start contributing to the AP Biology blog by clicking on the New Post button.

Extra Credit!!!!

This is a completely "borrowed" idea from other AP Biology teachers except I am SO much nicer in that instead of this being a mandatory assignment, contributions to the blog will be extra credit opportunities. So, folks, here's the rules:

1. AP Biology related. While I am a friend to all the sciences, this is, you know, AP biology, so your post has to be related to what we are studying. Yes, you can discuss things we haven't discussed yet. I know you have all read ahead in the book :)

2. A minimum of 100 words. Stop giving me dirty looks. This has been 100 words.

3. So a 100 words of what? You can summarize a topic we've been discussing, you can ask a question and explain exactly what you don't understand about something, you can look up an article (provide the link) and talk about why it is cool or not cool or just kind of cool, you can find an awesome, trippy movie and embed it, you can find neat-o pics and discuss them, you can look up experiments and talk about how you want/don't want to do them in class, you can read about scientists and then form an opinion about them. The really cool part, now pay attention here, is that blogging is a very informal writing environment. Write in your voice. Go for a spell check, but go ahead and LOL and exclamation point away. Get excited about science and show it here. Essentially, nerd out.

4. How will I grade this? First of all, don't copy paste. I catch it. You know I do. And it is super easy for me to catch it on the blog. I will check to see that you wrote at least 100 words, I will check out the article, movie, pics, etc, then read the summary to make sure that you know what you are talking about. And if it all checks out, then bingo boingo 100% in that extra credit category. Sweet, right?

Have fun, kiddos.