My Science Box

Performance Tasks Closed Chemistry- Design and build a closed structure in which a chemical reaction can occur.  You will present your demonstration to the class providing evidence for conservation of mass.  ...

Performance Tasks Students will be able to design an organism that could live in Pt Reyes, both today and what adaptations it would need in order to live there in one ...

What understandings or goals would be assessed through this task?

•    Students will identify the forces acting on a self-propelled vehicle and explain how the motion of the vehicle demonstrates Newton’s laws.

Through what authentic performance task will students demonstrate understanding?

Task overview:

Performance tasks Other-worldly sports – Students create a poster illustrating how their favorite sport might look on a planet of their choosing, explaining how differences in gravity and atmosphere could affect ...

Mars Exploration Rovers This special-effects image combines a model of the Mars rover Opportunity and 46 photogrpahs that Opportunity took of "Burns cliffs" near the edge of "Endurance Crater". Image ...

Sickle Cell Anemia
Sickle-shaped red blood cellsSickle cell disease is a disorder that affects the red blood cells. Red blood cells use a protein called hemoglobin to transport oxygen from the lungs to the rest of the body. Normally, red blood cells are round and flexible so they can travel freely through the narrow blood vessels.

Patients with sickle cell disease have a mutation in a gene that codes for part of the hemoglobin protein. As a result, hemoglobin does not form properly, causing red blood cells to be oddly shaped. These irregularly shaped cells get stuck in the blood vessels and are unable to transport oxygen properly, causing pain, frequent infections, and damage to the organs. Patients with sickle cell disease only survive to be 20 to 30 years old. About 1 in 500 babies born in America has the disease.

The normal hemoglobin nucleic acid sequence looks like:
T A C C A C G T G G A C T G A G G A C T C
A T G G T G C A C C T G A C T C C T G A G

Cystic Fibrosis
Cycstic fibrosis breathing apparatusCystic fibrosis is a genetic disease that affects many different parts of the body. There are approximately 30,000 Americans with cystic fibrosis. The most serious problem is the production of extremely thick, sticky mucus that clogs up the bronchial tubes in the lungs and the passageways in the pancreas (remember, the pancreas makes digestive juices that help break down food). This causes malnutrition, diabetes, lung infections, and difficulty getting enough oxygen to the body. Most people with cystic fibrosis die in their 20s or 30s from lung failure.

The following are a series of real world genetics problems that relate to the genetic disorders cystic fibrosis and sickle cell anemia. They may be used to give students practice ...

Protein synthesis comic strip Created by teachers from the Science STARTS/Delta Sierra Science Program summer institute Let your creative juices flow. The process of translating nucleic acids into amino acids ...

This is an alternative assessment activity in which students pull apart a rotting log as an example of a microhabitat that can be explored in the classroom. As they dissect ...