🧫 Mitosis and Meiosis | Cellular Reproduction

In this project we individually created videos about cellular reproduction: Mitosis and Meiosis:

How is the reproduction of cells essential to the survival of organisms?

Without cellular reproduction you and I would not be alive. We would not be alive because;

1. Without Meiosis, there would be no sperm and egg cells. Without sperm and egg cells, there can be no fertilization, resulting in no zygote, resulting in no children.
2. Without Mitosis, there would be no way for the zygote to grow, once again resulting in no offspring.

So as you can see, cellular reproduction is vital to the survival and creation of organisms.

To build knowledge we completed several workbooks and Khan Academy quizzes. Thankfully I already knew a lot about mitosis and meiosis thanks to a project I did prior to high school, so passing the quizzes and unit tests wasn’t terribly difficult. More of a nice refresher.

Remember last year when we made 3D models in a finicky 3D design platform called Tinkercad? I was looking forward to never using it again. Sadly I was mistaken. For millstone 4 we created 3D models of mitosis and meiosis in Tinkercad. I was able to use my laptop to design the models, which is better than on iPad, but I still hope this is the last time we’ll be using Tinkercad in PLP. Tinkercad isn’t bad, it’s just not as intuitive or smooth to operate as I’d like. Persevering through using Tinkercad and staying on task in class was a good way for me to show by ability for the curricular competency “Questioning and predicting: Demonstrate a sustained intellectual curiosity about a scientific topic or problem of personal interest.” Nonetheless, here are my completed 3D models:

We then got to do a fun experiment of sorts. Earlier in the project we had planted Garlics. Ariane and I named our garlics Galfred I and Galfred II.

We then sliced off small sections of their roots off to look at under a microscope. Here’s a slideshow of each step of preparing the slides for observation under a microscope:

Here’s a gallery of some of the photos we were able to take of the garlic root cells. This activity was a great way to grow my ability to excel at the curricular competency “Planning and conducting: Collaboratively and individually plan, select, and use appropriate investigation methods, including field work and lab experiments, to collect reliable data (qualitative and quantitative).” I really enjoyed getting to do this experiment and look forward to more experiments in the future.

We then individually created videos about mitosis and meiosis. I used Keynote and screen shots and screen recordings of my 3D Tinkercad Models to create the visuals for my image. I then exported them from Keynote and put them into iMovie, where I added music and voiceovers. This assignment was an excellent way for me to improve my skill with the curricular competency “Scientific Communication: Formulate physical or mental theoretical models to describe a phenomenon.” If you didn’t watch the video at the top of this post, make sure to do so now:

Overall this project was pretty good. Although I already knew most of the contents learned, it was a nice refresher and I did learn a few knew things as well. I definitely hope never to use Tinkercad for school again, we’ll see what happens. Although I didn’t much like using Tinkercad I am pretty happy with the way the models added to my video. I really enjoyed looking at the garlic roots under the microscope and hope to do more experiments in the future. Thanks for reading!