Study Guide for Biology 1110 Laboratory Practical One

Exercise 1- Microscopy

1.      What is meant by “compound light microscope”?

2.      Know the parts and the function of the parts of the compound light microscope.

3.      Know the steps for focusing a sample at the lowest power.

4.      What is meant by parfocal?

5.      Be able to calculate the total magnification of a scope with any objective.

6.      Does low power or high power have a larger field of view?  How did we calculate the field of view of our scopes?

7.   How do you prepare a wet mount of cheek cells?

8.   What is meant by “depth of focus”?

9.   What is meant by “inversion” related to microscope use?

Exercise 2- Carbon Compounds

1.      Know the basic premise of the 4 tests performed for organic compounds, and be able to identify a positive reaction.

2.   Be able to give examples and characteristics of carbohydrates, lipids and proteins.

3.   Be able to explain steps that you would take to determine the types of organic compounds found in an unknown sample.

4.   What are the monomers for proteins? 

5.   What are the monomers for carbohydrates?

6.   What are “polar” versus “nonpolar” compounds?

7.   How are monomers or subunits of organic compounds linked together to create polymers?

Exercise 4- What Determines Metabolic Reaction Rates?

1.      What is an enzyme? substrate? active site? product?

2.      For our lab experiments, what served as the enzyme? What was the substrate?  What was the product?

3.      How could you tell if the products (water and oxygen) had been produced?

4.      How did temperature affect catalase activity?

5.      How did pH affect catalase activity?

6.      Given a series of tubes, be able to identify the tubes with the highest catalase activity and the least catalase activity.

7.      What does it mean to denature an enzyme?

8.      Why is enzyme shape important to enzyme function?

9.   What determines the shape of an enzyme or other protein? How can heat alter the shape?? How can pH changes alter shape? Why?

10.  How were the toober and pushpins used to model protein structure?

Exercise 3 Cell Structure and Plasma Membrane Function

 1.  Be able to define the following terms: solute, solvent, diffusion, osmosis, isotonic, hypertonic, hypotonic

2.   Know differences in prokaryotic and eukaryotic cells. 

3.  Be able to identify the three primary shapes of bacteria under the microscope.

4.  Be able to recognize and identify differences in plant and animal cells.

5.  Be able to recognize a typical plant or animal cell under the microscope.

6.   Be able to identify elodea cells in hypertonic and hypotonic solutions.

7.   Be able to identify red blood cells in hypertonic and isotonic solutions. ?

8.   Know what happens to red blood cells that have been placed in a hypotonic solution?

9.   How and why do plant cells respond differently than animal cells to hypotonic solutions?

Exercise 5- Photosynthesis

1.      Know the overall formula for photosynthesis.

2.      What is chromatography?

3.      What is meant by the visible light spectrum?

4.      Be able to identify pigments on a strip of chromatography paper based on their location and appearance.

5.      Explain how chromatography separates plant pigments.

6.      How are R_f values calculated?

7.      What is spectrophotmetry?

8.    Be able to graph, and interpret graphs showing the absorption spectrum of the photosynthetic pigments.