Re: Insights I've gained from my Bio class so far

On Sun, 29 Jan 2006 15:10:02 -0800, Stanley Friesen wrote:

> Daniel Harper <daniel_harper@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>>
>>Firstly, I was going over some of my notes today from the first week of
>>class. (Got a test in a couple of weeks and I was taking some time to go
>>back over the material.) Obviously, it was some very basic stuff, but I
>>ran across the little pie chart the professor drew that indicated the
>>relative percentages of organisms in the diversity of life -- i.e. how
>>many species of chordates, insects, mammals, primates, et cetera. A number
>>that jumped out at me was that there are approximately 4200 species of
>>mammals in the animal kingdom, of which approximately 1000 are bats, and
>>that approximately 1.8 million species are known.
>
> Add to that, there are many *unknown* species.

You mean there are things _science doesn't know_? Psst, don't tell McCoy.

>>
>>Whenever we see anti-evolutionists (especially YECers) around here talking
>>about problems with evolution, the examples they give of problem organisms
>>always seem to revolve around large, macro-scale organisms that all of us
>>are generally familiar with. (I.E. dogs turning into cats, cattle giving
>>birth to ducks, et cetera.) I have no doubt that if you asked most
>>creationists about the relative diversity of species, they would likely
>>believe that large-scale organisms like these represented a fair
>>percentage of the life on earth. (To be fair, the same is also true of
>>many of those who support evolution as the primary means of describing the
>>history of life on Earth; ignorance cuts both ways.)
>
> Indeed the tinyness of our branch gets even more profound when you add
> in the fact that microscopic (unicellular) life forms are under-sampled
> relative to macroscopic one (due to difficulty in collecting). There
> are gene assays that suggest a vast diversity of prokaryotes in the soil
> and elsewhere that have never shown up in any lab culture or otherwise
> been seen by humans. The proportion of prokaryotes that are actually
> known is likely to be well under half.

Is there a source where I can get some more information on this?

<snip a bit>

>>Furthermore, much of the awareness-changing "heavy lifting" of the class
>>has happened not so much in the class environment itself, but in the lab.
>>Sure, these have been very simple labs intended only to show some of the
>>tools and methods of science, but I suspect that the vast majority of
>>anti-evolutionists have never spent any amount of time in a serious
>>biology lab (except perhaps to dissect a frog or two) and have never
>>examined life through a scientific-quality microscope.
>
> I am not sure I would call dissecting a frog a real lab experiment - it
> is more of an interactive visual aid :-)

And, ironically, it was that sort of thing that had made me decide years
ago that I "didn't like" Biology -- because instead of dealing with hard
science like physics or chemistry did, all biologists were up to was
dissecting things and generally making a mess. (I was young, and I
apologize.) In 10th grade we dissected frogs, and I _hated_ it, largely
due to the awful smells and sensations of dealing with preserved flesh,
and also because memorizing all that anatomy (largely learned off of
bad-quality Xeroxes of book originals) seemed rather pointless.

I wonder how many other potential scientists are turned off by such
things. If my high school biology class had emphasized evolutionary
processes, survival strategies, et cetera in a more rigorous way, I might
have found myself much more interested ten years ago.

>>
>>The first lab that we did was quite simple, involving simply measurement
>>and the use of various scientific measuring tools. I found it to be a
>>reasonably fascinating way of examining the inherent difficulties in
>>obtaining good data from very simple things, even given reasonably
>>scientifically-accurate equipment.
>
> Ah yes, the measuring lessons. I remember those. Quite enlightening,
> as you say.

Funnily enough, several of the groups in the lab section quickly sussed me
out as a science major, since I seemed to already know what to expect in
that lab. Little did they know that I just worked at a copy shop... :->

>>
>>To be fair, I have had personal experience with this concept in a much
>>more mundane setting at work. I have spent some time working at a small
>>copy shop where one of our regular tasks is to do various paper-cutting
>>jobs like business cards or postcards. Even with a large ream-cutter with
>>a stop and a sharpened blade, doing what seem to be very simple tasks like
>>cutting a sheet of paper into thirds is nearly impossible to do
>>accurately. Very tiny human errors on the macro-scale can cause large
>>disruptions in the finished product, when trying to get cut sizes that are
>>identical to the naked eye and that leave a smooth finish when running
>>one's finger along the entire stack. I leave work almost every day wishing
>>I had a $3000 digital paper cutter like the local Kinko's has.
>
> Gee, sounds like a good investment.
>

Well, as I said, the store is closing, so maybe the company made some
other bad decisions. A digital cutter is not the only piece of equipment
that we asked for, but it was the one that would have been first on our
list to receive if we'd had any say in the matter.

> [Seriously, I would find your job totally frustrating].

Retail in general requires a certain type of personality. Namely, one that
is willing to put up with extreme amounts of stress due to upper
management and angry customers for little pay. (No, I'm not bitter at all.)

>>
>>The second and third labs both involved microscopy...
>>
>>(An aside. I've read accounts that Babe Ruth gave when he first stepped up
>>onto the pitcher's mound for the first time and felt this unbearable sense
>>of "rightness" to the sensation, that on some level, he felt that pitching
>>was what he was _born_ to do. When I first started playing with the
>>microscope in that lab, I felt many of the same sensations, that the
>>mechanism seemed natural and obvious to me, and that the power and
>>capability of the device simply "felt right" under my admittedly
>>completely unschooled guidance. It was one of the most amazing feelings in
>>my still-young life to realize how much I simply enjoyed operating that
>>mechanism and viewing things at high-powered resolution.)
>
> You can see some amazing things under a microscope - especially if you
> have one of the ones with advanced optics, such as I got to use when I
> worked for Dr. Bovee years ago. Somewhere I believe I still have the
> drawings I made of an undescribed species of amoeba I found *once* (and
> never again, despite several attempts).

Amoeba frieseni? I can buy it.

Seriously, that sounds very cool.

>>
>>Intellectual assent to the similarity of all life takes on new meaning
>>when you've looked at various microbes under high magnification, as we did
>>in the second lab. While getting a sample of amoebae for examination, one
>>of my lab partners must have accidentally let loose a skin cell or two,
>>because I happened to get a glance at something that is undeniably not an
>>amoeba right alongside that one-celled organism, and simply seeing them
>>next to each other really helped to drive home the point that _we are all
>>essentially the same thing_. We are all made of the same materials, all a
>>product of evolutionary processes that act on all of nature, and all
>>subject to the same physical laws.
>>
>>Besides, watching a paramecium use its cilia to swim around on the slide
>>was just freakin' cool.
>
> Yep. I have even seen wild paramecia, that is ones I found in random
> water samples from campus rather than a prepared culture. Some of the
> other ciliates are quite amazing - like the one with the long "neck"
> (really just a long, motile cellular extension).

We did spend a few minutes examining random "pond water", but I'm afraid I
didn't have enough time to really get into anything interesting. For some
reason, my fellow lab mates were more interested in finishing the lab and
getting the grade than in letting me play with my expensive new toy for a
few hours. (I'm sure the lab instructor would have been displeased with
that as well.)

>
>> And I actually got to see a Euglena's flagellum in
>>motion, although they were a bit too faint to see clearly.
>
> That is largely due to the motion, which is rather rapid.
>

We used a bit of methyl cellulose to slow the organisms down, which seemed
to freeze many in their tracks, and even the Euglena didn't move around a
whole lot, if at all. We had a prepared slide that we viewed (I used a
slightly darker setting on the light source) and I got a better view of
the flagellum. Guess that's why it's a prepared slide.

(BTW, does methyl cellulose slow down these organisms by chemical or
physical means? Is it a poison? I asked the lab instructor, but she seemed
unsure.)

>
> If you like microscopy, it is worth pulling water samples out of any
> pond or puddle you see and letting "ferment".

If I continue in this vein, I may consider buying a 'scope for myself,
although prices seem to be way higher than I'm in the market to spend for
the foreseeable future. Any tips for getting the university to let me
spend some free time (oh, such copious free time) seeing what I can find
for myself? Or is that just a pipe dream until I get to graduate work?

> Just among the
> unicellular eukaryotes there is an amazing variety to be seen. Ciliates
> with little rigid bodies shaped like a barrel. Cryptomonds. Amoebas of
> all shapes and sized (I suspect the ones you used in lab were the common
> giant amoeba, _Amoeba proteus_ - most species are much smaller).
>

Yeah, _proteus_ was the one we were examining. I even thought I saw one or
two with the naked eye at one point, although I could have just been
seeing air bubbles.

> Seeing wild amoebas can be a touch tricky - you have to pull up some
> substrate into your pipette, and then wait a few minutes for the amoebae
> to crawl off of it onto the slide (all without letting the microscope
> light overheat the sample and kill them). Also, amoebae are often
> rather transparent, and thus easy to overlook.
>

We had to try two or three times to get the little buggers even with the
prepared sample.

> [I got rather a lot of experience on this, as Dr. Bovee was, in his day,
> one of the top amoeba experts in the world].

Sounds fascinating. I feel like such a dork for saying this, as I am not
the sort to express excitement or happiness readily, but I am excited to
be in every single lesson I'm taking, even though I know this stuff is the
brain-dead material they feed even to <gasp> philosophy majors. <ducks>
I'm feeling really good about this, and I'm hoping to stick to an academic
environment, teaching and doing research, once I complete all my
undergraduate and graduate work.

What is it about learning science that just makes you feel _good_? Must be
all that ignorance leaving your body. :->

--
Get it in libraries. Let the public decide.
danielharper.blogspot.com

(Change terra to earth to email)

.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: Insights Ive gained from my Bio class so far
    ... >many species of chordates, insects, mammals, primates, et cetera. ... >percentage of the life on earth. ... >jumping over in evolution is from tiny one-celled organisms (amoeba always ... >has happened not so much in the class environment itself, but in the lab. ...
    (talk.origins)
  • Insights Ive gained from my Bio class so far
    ... many species of chordates, insects, mammals, primates, et cetera. ... about problems with evolution, the examples they give of problem organisms ... percentage of the life on earth. ... has happened not so much in the class environment itself, but in the lab. ...
    (talk.origins)
  • Re: Insights Ive gained from my Bio class so far
    ... >>>has happened not so much in the class environment itself, but in the lab. ... >science like physics or chemistry did, all biologists were up to was ... If my high school biology class had emphasized evolutionary ... Dr. Bovee's *expensive* microscope. ...
    (talk.origins)
  • Re: career out of natl lab ?
    ... involuntarily (the lab fired them), where did they go, what do they do ... became so severe that the management ordered this investigation the ... and complete a job which the experimentalists would ... I lived a life, in a career of Machiavellian chairs, bosses, lab ...
    (sci.research.careers)
  • Re: Purrs for me, too *sigh*
    ... and bring it to the lab. ... the new company, but if he can do this to your husband, he can do it ... I hate that health insurance is tied to where you work, ... note of the fact that she has a lot of the good things in life. ...
    (rec.pets.cats.anecdotes)