We started our Module 7 session by completing Experiment 7.1, “DNA Extraction”.  While we were letting the hand soap destroy the plasma membranes and open the cell, we watched the informational videos on my initial Module 7 post.  

(If we had more time, I’m sure I could have convinced the “students” to re-create the water ballet mitosis in the pool.)

After all our “ingredients” were added, the strands of DNA started to float up to the surface.  It looked like this:

We tried to look at some strands under the microscope, but they kind of clumped up into a blob and it was difficult to make out the shape of anything specific.

Next, we did a review on the stages of Mitosis, prior to looking at slides under the microscope.  I was planning on doing Applie’s Playdough Mitosis, but forgot to buy playdough and didn’t have my recipe handy to make my own.  So we had to improvise.  Our stages of Mitosis looked something like this:

“Math-U-See meets Apologia: Mitosis”

While we had the blocks out, many other things were constucted, none of which had anything to do with Biology!   

The objective of Experiment 7.2 was to observe the differences between mitosis in a plant cell and mitosis in an animal cell.  First we looked at Ascaris (round worm) to determine which phases of mitosis we could locate in the cells.  See if you can find the stages of mitosis in these images:

Next we compared animal cell mitosis to plant cell mitosis using an Allium root tip.  See what stages of mitosis you can identify: