Wow, I can't believe this class is already over! it was so fun not only to learn about different chemicals in the last part of the class and to create and execute my very own lab about water ways! Both my final projects work is included in the link (about the water ways and how Daphnia can be affected from different over the counter drugs) and this link (about drugs legalization and chemical structures with reactions to interacting chemicals).
In this class I learned most about drugs and different interactions they can have with each other (in warm ups before class we would work on balancing equations that have chemical formulas included within them). I not only learned more about Chemistry but I learned a little math with moles (not the animal or the thing on your body!), which are the amount of atoms in a chemical substance. We also worked on dividing and multiplying fractions to go with our warm up questions (which I never was very good at so I got more practice). Yet, if I would do something different this semester I would have tried to connect my lab experiment to my drug debate because I was looking how different drugs affect Daphnia and my argument for my drug Buspirone was how it negatively and positively affects people. Based on my lab design what I would redo would used a larger tank to hold the Daphnia and study for if the drugs affect their reproductive abilities, but I would keep the same drugs that I chose since those are the most used and familiar common medication and I could show the best results using them. Some of the reactions that happened with the Daphnia lab that I wasn't expecting was when using the Adivil's and Aspirin when that Daphnia stopped moving to eat algae this crystallization would form around them killing them instantly, taking all the oxygen. On a different note, with my drug debate on Buspirone (Buspar) I learned the most about the structure of it and how it treats a section of natural substances in the brain (neurotransmitters). The elements in the drug (Buspirone) are HydroChloride, Nitrogyen, Oxygen, and Carbonate. Also learned how dangerous anti-depressants can be along with anti-anxiety drugs can be and that by building a tolerance to different dosages you can later become addictive from having to need higher dosages to treat your illness. What I hope the audience remembers is that sometimes what commercials and doctors tell you is not always to fully benefit you because they are still trying to get money and they won't always tell you studies that found the drug to be dangerous or not as efficient as other possible one.
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Date: 11-1-18 Thursday
Sample Location: discovery and san marcos blvd. Medication: Calcium Carbonate (tums) .76g- .3g Observations: From what I saw in my observations a large of the majority of the tests were effective in making the daphnia survival rate higher than any of the other experiments done because the calcium carbonate did not seem to have a severe effect on the daphnia till the second round of dosage. I even found a pod looking object that was in the water that I later found out was an egg. After a day or two I found out that it might of hatched (most likely because I could not find it within the sample). I saw that some of the Daphnia that died were adult and less of juvenile. When the behavior of the Daphnia before it died was a very rapid heart beat, then it would float around a little bit with a much slower heart beat for even it's average beat before in contact with the medication. For visual representation of data found click here. PIctures here: 2 Analysis: I believe, in analysis, that the medication was not consistently harmful to the daphnia. The tums would make the water partly more cloudy because of all the chunks from the powder but the daphnia would not choke on it as much as the last medication given to them. This medication, in conclusion was survivable in and in less of an effect to the Daphnia, letting them still have the ability to reproduce. This is the face of someone who loves chemistry and has an Aspirin Lab! But before I could ever start this awesome lab, I first had to know what I was doing by doing a pre-lab worksheet! In this pre-lab I read through how it talked about different phenol groups, what they were called, the structure they pocess, if they were loacted in aspirin and the formulas! I actually created a formula in which would create a type of phenol group along with why and how this reaction would occur. After we did the pre-lab we had the procedure set up (we used Iron Chloride, Salicylic acid, Acetysalicylic acid, Willow bark extract). We mixed these chemicals to see the chemcial change weither it was color to constistancy of the substance. Lastly, was the post-lab which we answered what we observed in which phenol groups we made and the molecule ion formula, along with how and where they were formed during the experiment. We also how to figure out a condensation reaction that appeared in the lab we did and had to figure out the name and chemical formula for it as well.
This was definatly something I had never done before which was looking at the molecules of plastic. Below is a picture of PH (the plastic my group was givin to study)! This is what it looked like when we built a piece of the model molecule! The black pieces are Carbon ions and the white are Hydrogen ions. The objects connecting the the Carbons and the Hydrogens are called Ionic Bonds (some are doubled so that the ions can be satisfied with the charges). This is the entire model when we connected all the molecules (models) together! This another digital version of what the plastic molecule looks like! Below are images of Density and Diffusion graphs!
Heather Liwanag, more or so known as Dr. Liwanag wasn’t always a professor and researcher, at one point she was a young girl who was a very serious student but found time to go to the beach because it was something she enjoyed. Heather, grew up in the sunny city of Granada Hills, California. She had always had an interest in animals and had thought about being a veterinarian but she didn’t really know what to do with it. Interacting with animals in the wild was something she had always wanted to do and with the great idea from her high school chemistry teacher she had then thought about becoming a professor. It was the job for her when she learned that she could research while teaching other people as well, who wouldn’t want a job like that?
Mr. Bradish, the chemistry teacher that gave her the idea of becoming a college professor was her motivation for her success today. Heather later went to college and volunteered for different scientists to get a feel for the lab work and field work to make sure it was something she really wanted to do. She worked in a lab studying damselfish, and another lab studying copepods and sea urchins. When the opportunity came she went to Mexico to go on a field research trip to study fish communication and that’s when she knew this was her calling! It wasn’t till though that in graduate school that she worked with mammals, but by then she was hooked on the science! Dr. Liwanag says it’s very important to try new things and make sure you like doing them or you could end up not really doing what your passionate about. As she dives deeper into her field, she is constantly learning new things! More than once she has found that her hypothesis or prediction was not correct, but she explains it as even more interesting because it means that she’s just learning more that she didn’t know before. At one time she compared fur to blubber for her PhD thesis, and she thought that the blubber would be better insulator, however she was wrong and it made her think about why marine mammals have evolved to use blubber multiple times. She found through experiments that blubber looks to evolved because of the physics of diving and swimming, not because it’s a better insulator. Some current projects that's shes’s working on in her lab include: development of thermoregulation and diving in Weddell seal pups, population monitoring of northern elephant seals at our local rookery, effects of super cooling on Italian Wall Lizards, thermal adaptations of Mediterranean House Geckos in different climates, and characteristics of feathers associated with aquatic adaptation in birds. As you can see she has a lot of projects in her lab that she constantly doing! When she’s doing her normal day-to-day routines every day isn’t always the same because of her research time and the teaching time she does! Her typical teaching day will include teaching the classroom or/and the lab, answering e-mails, and holding office hours for students to come ask her questions about the work in class or to work on projects. Her research is not, however, a everyday thing so when she does get to do it, she really enjoys spending time in the lab collecting data. Her favorite thing is field work-especially with animals! Her field work days consist of long days and early mornings, packing as much work with the animals as possible, and making sure to eat some dinner before going to bed and doing the whole routine all over again! Dr. Liwanag does have a life outside of her passion to work. She has a family with her husband and two kids, plus her third child (not human) the family dog! As she said she loves to work with animals- seals and lizards- and getting to be outdoors a lot, including the beach and hiking. Heather plans to continue teaching and her passion for animals through research labs and classes at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo College. Her relentlessness for her work never stops but she enjoys the life outside of the college with doing more things she loves. Date: 10-5-18 |
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December 2018
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