Project Blog

After writing our full proposal it really made me reflect on how i think that this project of ours is going to go. I believe that after a certain amount of the chemicals are added into our test tubes of organisms that the chemicals will indeed kill them. One thing that I found to be extremely interesting and unique about this project is that we are mocking something that we feel these dinoflagelettes will experience in their natural habitat, the ocean and the runoff into the ocean.
I feel that our challenges within the experiment are going to include keeping our data based solely off of just the chemicals. We need to be extremely cautious about the way that we treat them with all other features before and during the project. Some things that we are going to need to monitor so closely that are going to serve as a challenge would include, regulating the temperature within the box, assuring that the light they are under is switched on/off at an exact 12 hour schedule as well as doing our best to keep them as undisturbed as possible and giving each of them an equal amount of interaction.
One thing that concerns me is the possibility of the experiment turning in the direction of the dinoflagelettes dying at the first initiation of the chemicals that we put into the test tubes. If this is the case we would know that they can only survive in pure salt water. Although we do know that they will not be able to survive in this form of water to a certain extent I would like to be able to test how MUCH chemicals they can handle to survive.

This is a photo of our bioluminescent dinoflagelettes glowing before they have been exposed to any form of chemicals. 

Chain Factory

The activity we performed as a class initially came off as confusing to me. In the beginning each member of the class was handed a card with a number on it and a sheet that had the corresponding role on the paper. After a short explanation and direction we were set off in the room to do a trial run(I wasn't quite sure what to expect or what I was doing). As each member of the class got used to their "job" the process began to  move faster and faster. By the end of all the chaos in the room we were allowed time to sit down and reflect on what we had just done.
Some observations that I made within the room as this was going on was the person in the room with the role of the "generator" and the person called the "keeper of the plans" were not doing any busy work throughout all the chaos and a few other other people were just standing around watching most of the time as well while the messengers and the assemblers and many others were scrambling around the room. So in other words, they roles each person had differed greatly. While i discussed with my group what we just did we found out that we were acting out the components of a cell and each person in the class was a different representation of a part of the cell. For example, the office was the nucleus and chain we were creating was protein made up of amino acids which was represented by the cubes. In my case I was a assembler which was a ribosome given direction by my messenger which represented a messenger RNA.
I thought that this way of learning such a complex system in this type of way was incredibly helpful. I have attempted to learn this system manny times before and have never made it more than a memorization for my upcoming exam. After this I can honestly feel like I understand it. I think that I feel  much more confident in this because I was able to be in the process myself and have to catch on to what they others were doing around me an then relate it to the actual functions of a cell.

Think Like A Mountain

I felt that this essay had an amazing way of presenting the point that it was getting across. I was confused by the concept of it so I had to read it a couple times to truly understand what they meant by "thinking like a mountain". The beginning of this writing is a creative way of saying how the call of a wolf comes off in a different perspective to all different kinds of people but the mountain is the one who truly sees it how it is. The call of a wolf appeals to dear, to hunters, to cowmen and more all with the  mind set of their own benefit and not how the wolf is benefitting them. This made me feel like my eyes were being opened to a more broad mindset about things. It was presenting me with a new way of thinking "like a mountain" that could be applied to more situations than just this one. As stated above, I was confused by what I was feeling about this article but the more that I read and understood it I would say that the essay just went along with my feelings. The reading did not make me  uncomfortable but it did make me uncomfortable to know that other individuals are blinded by their own needs and important topics they won't take the time to understand.
I really enjoyed the concept of "thinking like a mountain" and it truly makes sense to me. If you think about a topic that has nothing to do with you or give you and personal gain you are going to think of what you think is the most rational in the long run as well as the time being. Although, when dealing with something that could give you personal gain at the time, you aren't going to be thinking about what ways if could change you and others in 10 years from that moment.
When thinking about where I live I would think that the concepts listed in this essay should apply. In my personal opinion it is better to lose out on what you may be desiring for a short time than to have it be permanent in the long run.