Honey Bee Project
The common bee also known as the honey bee. Such a seemingly small part of our existence, yet there is so much more to this small insect. Without it there would be no honey, not to large of a loss right? I am sure that there are people who would hate to lose such a taste, but it's just honey right? Well no it's no just honey. Bees pollinate most all of our fruits and vegetables. Without bees we would starve, but not just us the animals too. The peanut requires bees to pollinate, thus without bees we would not have peanuts. No more peanut curry, roasted peanuts, salted peanuts, peanut m&m's, there are so many things that you need peanuts for. This is the importance of the honey bee.
What I went in to for this project was revolving the beekeepers. There is a lot to learn about beekeeping. How bees create their homes, protect their homes, feed themselves, the life cycle of a bee, the process to get the honey out of the beeswax and into a jar. It's all very fascinating. That's why I want my own beehive. What I designed for the project was a honey uncapper. I was simple, but the math is the important part. There was a lot of trigonometric math to be done with all of the 30-60-90 triangles I made. That was the most important part for me because that is what I do and love to do. I don't know of any thing that I would have changed for this project and am completely satisfied with what I created.
What I went in to for this project was revolving the beekeepers. There is a lot to learn about beekeeping. How bees create their homes, protect their homes, feed themselves, the life cycle of a bee, the process to get the honey out of the beeswax and into a jar. It's all very fascinating. That's why I want my own beehive. What I designed for the project was a honey uncapper. I was simple, but the math is the important part. There was a lot of trigonometric math to be done with all of the 30-60-90 triangles I made. That was the most important part for me because that is what I do and love to do. I don't know of any thing that I would have changed for this project and am completely satisfied with what I created.
Dissection Project Reflection
For my dissection I chose to do the shark. The main reason in chosing the shark was for a challenge. I have a mother that is a vetrinarian so I already have alot of information on things such as dogs, cats, and even pigs. The best part about my choice is that I got so see how a sharks' digestive system works. The most interesting part of it is the spiral valve. IT acts as the shark's small intestine, but is much smaller so that the shark stays thin. This was a very fun project for me because I became the person doing the "surgery" and I had a lot fun learning all about the anatomy of a shark.
Forensics Project
This project was mostly about forensic science. In the beginning we learned about exoneration. Exoneration is where a person is released from jail and has that injustice taken away from his record. We then went on a different tangent and started learning about skeletal analysis, DNA, MDNA, blood types, and autopsies. It was all kind of sudden. Then we jumped back to exoneration and finished that up.
We learned multiple types of forensic sciences along the way. My favorite was DNA. It is the most fun out of all of them. I learned that 99.99% of our DNA is just like any other person. Another fun one was the autopsies. People have been using this for a very long time at first to find cures to deadly diseases. We know use them for both forensics and diseases and probably more.
I felt I did well on the research portion of the project. For those liitle essays on the different types of forensic sciences we had to do work on researching what the science was about and I felt I did well in that area of the project. My hardest portion of the project was focus. Our class is very notoriously bad about this. I find when the others around you are not focused you yourself are not focused.
We learned multiple types of forensic sciences along the way. My favorite was DNA. It is the most fun out of all of them. I learned that 99.99% of our DNA is just like any other person. Another fun one was the autopsies. People have been using this for a very long time at first to find cures to deadly diseases. We know use them for both forensics and diseases and probably more.
I felt I did well on the research portion of the project. For those liitle essays on the different types of forensic sciences we had to do work on researching what the science was about and I felt I did well in that area of the project. My hardest portion of the project was focus. Our class is very notoriously bad about this. I find when the others around you are not focused you yourself are not focused.
There was a man named Adolph Leutgert he was a successful sausage maker and he had told the police that his wife had ran off with another man. After a short search of his factory they found two of the rings that his wife had owned and a corset with small bones lying around it.
Generally you can find remains of a human body in shallow graves. The deaths are generally murders and the killer tried to hide the body. The basic information we get DNA from bones, teeth, and hair to identify the victim and also from the bones we could look at fractures, breaks, so on to identify. Holes in the skull could mean they have been hit by a blunt object or been shot in the head. Remains can be used to identify the sex whether male or female. A method used to find the gender of a victim is looking at the pelvis and sacrum. First find the two objects and fit them together. Once that is done look at it from the front,upside down, and the top. When looking at it straight on the pelvic angle should be greater than 90 degrees for a female and less than 90 degrees for a male. From the top you can see if the sacrum is tilted back if female or forward if male. Then finally you look at the bottom and can tell how wide it is. The way to determine the height of the victim use either the humerus, femur, or the radiu;s. The equations used to find the height depend upon whether the subject is female or male. Order of Equations: "Bone" "Female" "Male" Humerus LoH x 2.8 + 28.1 LoH x 2.9 + 27.8 Femur LoF x 1.94 + 28.1 LoF x 1.88 + 32 Radius LoR x 3.3 +32 LoR x 3.3 + 34 These resulting numbers are approximate and not exact and these equations provide a range of height with plus or minus 2 inches. Experimental studies with computer models is what are looking in to for the future. So that can scan the bones and look further than the human eye can. To see the tiniest of things, the smallest of fractures, and layout of bones. From looking at the victims remains the pelvis, the femur, the humerus, and radius. The pelvic angle is below 90 degrees and thus the victim is a male. Then the average height was found using all of the bones and then +-2 inches gave that the victims height was around 5’1” - 5’5”. All of the women were removed because of the angle. Then the hight came into place and narrowed down the choices. Then the use of Forensic Entomology came out and said that the body was 1-3 years old. Sources: |
The first time MDNA was used in a criminal case was in August, 1996. The male Paul Ware of Tennessee was convicted of rape and murder due to a small piece of hair found in the victim's throat. It proved to be superior to conventional testing because ti could differ hair and bone samples, versus conventional testing which came from blood or semen samples. It then proceeded to skyrocket in uses.
The MDNA is found in hair samples and instead of what we have in our nuclei there is what we call a maternal line. The line tells us who the biological mother and or grand mother is, but never the father. It tells us family members, but only on the mothers side. Let me explain what the maternal line is. Basically it follows the path the mothers make. Your grandma, mother, aunt, cousins as long as the original family member is female then you have the same line as them, there are a lot of possibilities. First we need to isolate the DNA from the cell. In order to do this we first separate the material to isolate cells and to do that we use a corrodent that breaks down the material. Then we need to filter out the unnecessary junk from the useful cells. After that it sits for a while and after a period of about 5 - 10 mins we start to pour in some alcohol to separate the DNA from the cells. We then proceed to put together the two pieces from the mother, grandma, so on to the one that we gathered from the scene. If it is a match then we have our man unless there just like DNA is and has a lot of the same properties. After analysis of dental records we found that two of the three men were eliminate due are brothers. In which case would be a hassle to find the victim. Anyways MDNA is analized to incorrect teeth without fillings/braces/retainers. Then to prove that the victim was the last remaining man we found that his MDNA and that matched with the victims mother so we have found our victim. |