Students learn that fats found in the foods we eat are not all the same; they discover that physical properties of materials are related to their chemical structures. Provided with several samples of commonly used fats with different chemical properties (olive oil, vegetable oil, shortening, animal fat and butter), student groups build and use simple LEGO MINDSTORMS(TM) NXT robots with temperature and light sensors to determine the melting points of the fat samples. Because of their different chemical structures, these fats exhibit different physical properties, such as melting point and color. This activity uses the fact that fats are opaque when solid and translucent when liquid to determine the melting point of each sample upon being heated. Students heat the samples, and use the robot to determine when samples are melted. They analyze plots of their collected data to compare melting points of the oil samples to look for trends. Discrepancies are correlated to differences in the chemical structure and composition of the fats.

Biology is designed for multi-semester biology courses for science majors. It is grounded on an evolutionary basis and includes exciting features that highlight careers in the biological sciences and everyday applications of the concepts at hand. To meet the needs of today’s instructors and students, some content has been strategically condensed while maintaining the overall scope and coverage of traditional texts for this course. Instructors can customize the book, adapting it to the approach that works best in their classroom. Biology also includes an innovative art program that incorporates critical thinking and clicker questions to help students understand—and apply—key concepts.

By the end of this section, you will be able to:Describe the four major types of lipidsExplain the role of fats in storing energyDifferentiate between saturated and unsaturated fatty acidsDescribe phospholipids and their role in cellsDefine the basic structure of a steroid and some functions of steroidsExplain the how cholesterol helps to maintain the fluid nature of the plasma membrane

By the end of this section, you will be able to:Describe the four major types of lipidsExplain the role of fats in storing energyDifferentiate between saturated and unsaturated fatty acidsDescribe phospholipids and their role in cellsDefine the basic structure of a steroid and some functions of steroidsExplain the how cholesterol helps to maintain the fluid nature of the plasma membrane

In this activity, students will have the opportunity to give nutritional advice to their peers and recommend a day of healthy meals to a visiting international student.

This presentation focus on which role nutrition plays in developing diabetes and how obesity affects diabetes development. Obesity and weight gain dramatically increase the risk of developing type 2 diabetes. But it’s not only the total calorie intake and the BMI that counts, so does the distribution between fat, protein and carbohydrates, in other words the composition of nutritions. In continuation of this it will be discussed how a restricting intake of carbohydrates might be the way to reduce or even eliminate the use of medication in diabetes treatments.

Narrator: Richard Steed.

In this activity, students will have the opportunity to give nutritional advice to their peers and recommend a day of healthy meals to a visiting international student.

In this activity, students will have the opportunity to give nutritional advice to their peers and recommend a day of healthy meals to a visiting international student.

The aim of this presentation is to expand the students’ knowledge about industrially produced trans fat (artificial trans fat). We will focus on how and why we produce trans fat. Furthermore, we will focus on the health consequences of eating trans fat.