I know I am doing two blog posts this week. I am getting caught up for school, because I got behind. So last week! Not much actually happened, except for one lab and the start of another. We also got introduced to the first real biology terms later in this post, I will give you the list. On the note of the labs the one that we only recently started on Friday was the only one that was really noteworthy, since it involves maggots and raw meat. Yes folks, maggots. Fly larvae. It is supposed to teach about the idea of spontaneous generation, the mistaken idea that a living thing can come from a non-living thing. The other one was stimulus response. Rather boring so I have decided to not put it on here.

Spontaneous Generation Lab

Materials 

• 3 beakers
• Plastic wrap
• Gauze 
• Rubber bands
• Tape(masking tape)
• 1 piece of paper and a pencil
• Raw meat(please let parents handle the meat kids)

Procedure

• Create a data table with three rows and fourteen columns
• Place three pieces of raw meat inside each beaker
• Label them beaker A B and C
• Over the top of beaker A, place a strip of gauze over the opening. make sure the holes in the gauze aren't too big. Place the rubber band around the beaker so it will keep the gauze down.
• On top of beaker B place nothing.
• On top of beaker C place the plastic wrap over the opening and put the rubber band on it so that the plastic wrap stays.
• Put these outside
• The next day, check these containers. Do so on a daily basis.
• In your table, if you see maggots put a +. If you don't see any maggots, put a 0.
• Make sure to check each container!
• After the experiment is over, throw away the meat AND WASH THE CONTAINER THOROUGHLY!

What you have done

You have just proven the theory of spontaneous generation incorrect. In the plastic wrap covered beaker, you should have no maggots. That is because they couldn't get inside the beaker to lay their eggs. In the uncovered beaker, there should be maggots.

Here are those definitions I promised you earlier

• Organism- any living thing
• Cell- basic unit of structure within the body
• Unicellular- a single celled organism
• Multicellular- multiple celled organism with a complex structure
• Stimulus- something that causes an organism to react
• Response- the reaction to the stimulus
• Development- how something grows and changes
• Spontaneous Generation- the mistaken idea that living things can grow from non-living things
  
• Autotroph- an organism that can make its own food
• Heterotroph- an organism that cannot make its own food and eats other organisms to survive
• Homeostasis- The stable internal organs and cells of the body