Reflection Day portfolio entry

Thinking about thinking

Successful students think about what they know and what they don’t know. They “plan a strategy for producing what information is needed” and are “conscious of their own steps and strategies during the act of problem solving”. They “reflect on and evaluate the productiveness of their own thinking” (Costa, 2000)

• Pick 5 questions from the assessment.

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• Pick the question(s) you got wrong first!

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• If needed, supplement with any questions you found interesting.

Sample Question/Reflection

Copy the question here.

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What was your original answer,

and what was the correct answer?

Follow the flowchart to find the appropriate green box, giving instructions for getting started on your answer.

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Add more space for your answer if necessary!

Sample Question/Reflection

Write a better question that would have challenged you!

Copy the question here.

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What was your original answer,

and what was the correct answer?

Follow the flowchart to find the appropriate blue box, giving instructions for getting started on your answer.

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Add more space for your answer if necessary!

Enzymes and catalysts…

Which action must occur for an enzyme to catalyze a chemical reaction?

A . A competitive inhibitor must first bind to an active site .

B . A substrate must bind to an active site of the enzyme .

C . A substrate must bind to an allosteric site of the enzyme .

D . A noncompetitive inhibitor must first bind to an active site .

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I chose C, but the correct answer was B.

Honestly, I just guessed. I thought that C sounded the most scientific, so I picked it. Here’s a review that might have helped, especially if I put it on my reference sheet!

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This graphic above points out that the substrates are brought together at the active site (because chemical reactions involve active changes in the molecules. Competitive inhibitors stick to the active site and get in the way. of the substrate. Non-competitive inhibitors don’t get in the way at the active site, but bind to an allosteric site, which makes the active site misshapen and no longer active.

How a protein is formed…

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Which statement correctly describes how a protein is formed?

A . A monosaccharide bonded to a side chain is broken apart .

B . Amino acids are bonded together in a long chain to form a new molecule .

C . A molecule containing glycerol bonded to three fatty acids is broken apart .

D . A nitrogenous base, a sugar, and a phosphate group combine to form a new molecule

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I got it wrong. The right answer is B, but I selected D.

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My strategy was to narrow it down. I knew the question was about forming a new molecule, so that ruled out A and C, where molecules are being broken apart. After that I guessed, because I didn’t remember whether proteins were made of amino acids or if they were made of a nitrogenous base, a sugar, and a phosphate.

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If I had memorized that amino acids made proteins, like fatty acids make lipids, that would have helped. Also, if I remembered that D was describing nucleic acids (like DNA and RNA), that might have pushed me toward the right answer.

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Sample Question/Reflection

A cattle farmer genetically crosses a cow (female) with a white coat with a bull (male) with a red coat. The resulting calf (offspring) is roan, which means there are red and white haris intermixed in the coat of the calf. The genes for coat color are co-dominant.

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Although a farm has cattle in all three colors, the farmer prefers roan cattle over white or red cattle. Use the Punnett square to show a cross that would produce only roan offspring.

I drew the correct Punnett square (shown below), but instead of doing what the question asked (producing roan offspring), I showed what the offspring would be for two roan parents. My strategy was sound and I would have gotten full credit if the question was about the offspring of two roan parents, but I didn’t read the question carefully.

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I should have had a RR male and a WW

female, or vice versa to produce only

roan offspring.

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Sample Question/Reflection

Write a better question that would have challenged you!

A species of snapping turtles has a tongue that resembles a worm. The tongue is used to attract small fish. Which best describes the interaction between the fish and the snapping turtle?

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I answered A, which is the right answer

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I knew it wasn’t symbiosis or competition, because in those situations, they don’t feed off of each other, so that narrowed it down to predation and parasitism. I didn’t remember the difference between predation and parasitism, so I guessed.

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After looking it up, I realized that predation is related to the word predator, and the turtle is a predator and the fish is its prey. In parasitism, the parasite doesn’t have to kill the other organism to feed from it.

Sample Question/Reflection

Write a better question that would have challenged you!

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Explain one likely reason why the wolf population rapidly increased between 1975 and 1980.

It was a little tricky to find the time frame they were talking about, but I found the two marks on the YEAR axis and traced them up to the wolf line, which was the thinner line. At the time that the wolf population was increasing, the moose population was decreasing, which seems counterintuitive. However, the wolf population was growing even more rapidly before the year 1975, and these wolves would be the right age to breed a few years after they were born. They had their cubs when food was becoming scarce, but the wolves didn’t die off until later, when the moose population had reached its lowest point.

Isle Royale is located in Lake Superior, and home to populations of wolves and moose. The graph shows the population sizes over time for both wolves and moose.

Sample Question/Reflection

Write a better question that would have challenged you!

Carbon is often considered the backbone of biological macromolecules. However, hydrogen is the most abundant element in the universe.

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Explain why the backbone of large macromolecules is made of carbon atoms rather than hydrogen atoms.

It was obvious that carbon, having four possible covalent bonds, can form many different kinds of molecules, including long chains of carbon atoms. This is how carbohydrates, starches, and many types of plastic are shaped. Hydrogen can only make one covalent bond, so once hydrogen bonds with another hydrogen, the resulting molecule has no open valence electrons to make more connections.

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It would have been more interesting to ask why silicon is not the backbone of biological macromolecules, since silicon has the same valence structure as carbon, and is more common in the Earth’s crust.