Biology Story Time

Hey … check out the NRHS Environmental Club’s online paper.  It’s a link on the bottom left side of their main web page titled:  Simply Green.   Check it out. http://www.spsk12.net/schools/nrhs/

1.  How many articles do they post in one issue?   2.  What are the topics in this issue?  3.  Read and comment on one of the articles that you read.  4.  What is the benefit of having an online-blog newspaper? 

We just finished this documentary film.  I would love to see the hardcover book of all the photos that the photographer took in China while completing this film  So I went online on Amazon.com and found this review. 

Book Description
Edward Burtynsky’s imagery explores the intricate link between industry and nature, combining the raw elements of mining, quarrying, shipping, oil production, and recycling into eloquent, highly expressive visions that find beauty and humanity in the most unlikely places. These images are metaphors for the dilemma of our modern existence: we are drawn by desire–the desire to live well and in comfort–yet we all know that the world is suffering to meet those demands. Our dependence on nature to provide the materials for our consumption and our concern for the health of our planet sets us into uneasy contradiction and feeds the dialogue in Burtynsky’s images between attraction and repulsion, seduction and fear. Burtysnky’s latest body of work gives visual form to the industrial and urban transformation of China, a place where industrial forces are gathering on a scale that the world has never experienced before. If the earth’s resources were up to now under siege through western colonialism and technological progress, then China is on the brink of a sweeping assault on the planet’s ecosystem that is only just forming and is nowhere close to expressing its full impact.

What sentences from the above review really resonate with you now that you’ve seen the film? 

For me, the summary suggests that the photographs create repulsion and attration at the same time.  I agree.  There was the tension in my head and heart between seeing their commitment and work ethic as “admirable” and yet feeling repulsed by their methodical, almost robotic like actions as they went through their daily existance.  

Our textbook has a great web site that it publishes for students.

http://www.glencoe.com/sec/science/biology/bio2004/index.html

I’m want to introduce you to this site and all the great reviews and “helps” that it has.  I just had a bit of fun myself playing a couple of the interactive reviews.  Not bad!

The city of San Fransico has just passed a law that will prohibit large grocery chains and pharmecies from using any plastic bags.  Other cities have also passed such laws, some outlawing styrofoam as well. 

Look up the environmental impact of plastics and polystyrene products.    

1.  Goggle this:  plastics and polystyrene recycling? 

2.  What are your thoughts about having a law restricting the use of plastics? 

3.  Would you ask your family to switch to using paper bags at the grocery store - why or why not?  

4.  Why did I title this article, “OIL … what is it good for?”

Our second test for this 2nd quarter is coming up this week.  The test will cover the topics of water chemistry and biochemistry.  We did a lab on the pH scale and we’ve covered the structure of an atom … how to determine it’s structure from its atomic number and mass.  The 4 macromolecules covered on the test will be:  carbohydrates, lipids, proteins, and nucleic acids.  There have been 3 homework assignments to review the topics, we will be making a foldable, and the material being tested is found in Chapter 6 of the text book.