Thought 39: Meiosis Models 🧬

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

This project began with this question. We all know that all living things have to reproduce, but how? Human reproduction is the form of reproduction we were most familiar with, so at the beginning of the project we watched a documentary about pregnancy. As a young person, I found the documentary to be pretty gross and there were a few times when I had to look away from the screen. I feel jealous of the other class, because they watched a censored version of the documentary.

Afterwards, we began to study the 2 different types of reproduction: Mitosis, and Meiosis. There are a few differences. Mitosis only requires 1 parent cell, while Meiosis requires 2. Mitosis is the simpler type of reproduction, but Meiosis creates diversity among the offspring. We also began our Meiosis experiment: we took 2 garlic plants, divided them into cloves, and attempted to grow the cloves into full garlic plants. A few weeks later, we cut the roots of the plants and put them under microscopes to try and identify any different stages of Meiosis.

After we learned about Mitosis and Meiosis, we began to make 3D models of each of the stages of the processes in Tinkercad. Tinkercad is a software used to make 3D models for engineering and 3D printing. We also used Tinkercad for a project last year. Once we had made our 3D models, we began to make a narrated video about the stages of reproduction.

 

Curricular Competencies

Questioning and Predicting

This competency is about demonstrating a sustained curiosity about a scientific topic. I demonstrated this competency over the whole course of the project. I didn’t know anything about cell reproduction before, but I found it to be very interesting. Perhaps I’ll take biology in grade 11.

Planning and Conducting

For this competency, we had to plan and use the correct methods during experiments. I showed this in the garlic experiment. We used the proper techniques and we followed the instructions correctly, except we didn’t get the desired results. We tried the experiment a few times, but we couldn’t make out clear stages of meiosis, so we used a pre-made sample of mitosis.

Scientific Communication

The last competency of this project is being able to create models to describe a phenomenon. I showed this in my video, where I explained each stage of mitosis and meiosis using my models and my voice overs. I described the similarities and differences between Mitosis and Meiosis and I summarized the garlic experiment.