This is a comprehensive textbook covering life functions that are ultimately interpretable in chemical terms, as chemistry is the logic of biological phenomena.
This 15-minute video lesson examines hemoglobin and its role in the circulatory system. [Biology playlist: Lesson 40 of 71].
This 16-minute video looks at oxygen uptake by hemoglobin in red blood cells. [Biology playlist: Lesson 38 of 71].
This lesson describes how the circulatory system works, including the heart, blood vessels and blood. Students learn about the chambers and valves of the heart, the difference between veins and arteries, and the different components of blood. This lesson also covers the technology engineers have developed to repair the heart if it is damaged. Students also understand how the circulatory system is affected during spaceflight (e.g., astronauts lose muscle in their heart during space travel).
Students randomly select jelly beans (or other candy) that represent genes for several human traits such as tongue-rolling ability and eye color. Then, working in pairs (preferably of mixed gender), students randomly choose new pairs of jelly beans from those corresponding to their own genotypes. The new pairs are placed on toothpicks to represent the chromosomes of the couple's offspring. Finally, students compare genotypes and phenotypes of parents and offspring for all the "couples" in the class. In particular, they look to see if there are cases where parents and offspring share the exact same genotype and/or phenotype, and consider how the results would differ if they repeated the simulation using more than four traits.
From The Human Evolution Coloring Book by Adrienne Zihlman, four different proteins from humans and horses are compared in this graphic and article, and the reasons each protein evolves at its own characteristic rate are discussed. Each protein is useful for measuring evolutionary change over a different time scale.
Focusing on human and primate examples significantly enhances students' interest in studying biology, specifically, evolution and classification. These laboratory activities illustrate key aspects of the distinctive hierarchical nature of biological classification. The first activity uses hemoglobin sequence data while the second uses skulls of apes, humans and fossil hominoids. Together, the two illustrate the concordant nature of separate lines of evidence supporting both the idea of evolution generally and that of human evolution specifically.
In a class discussion format, the teacher presents background information about basic human genetics. The number of chromosomes in both body cells and egg and sperm cells is covered, as well as the concept of dominant and recessive alleles. Students determine whether or not they possess the dominant allele for the tongue-rolling gene as an example.
