Bio Journal 2006

Hi people! Back form Hong Kong!! Had a great week!! Didn't learn much though. Nothing we kinda already knew. haha. good fun though.

Ok here's wat happened:

monday:

Flight to HK. So we got to the airport where we had a great meal sponsored by the organizers. Den boarded coach with some of the other schools who had arrived and left for Kadoorie Agricultural Research Centre (KARC)

Got to KARC checked in. Had really small rooms! haha. So we proceeded to mess it up to make it feel like home and mess it up we did. Take a look:

We didn't do much that day so after that generally was just dinner and a good night's sleep.

Tuesday:

Opening ceremony. We had a couple of lectures first on HK afforestation projects and then the ceremony. Den da best buffet lunch we've had (even though we'd been there only 2 days, the food was a welcome relief from the dinner and breakfast of the previous day and the morning.

Wednesday:

Visiting trips started (Finally) So we visited KFBG (Kadoori Farm and Botanic Gardens) that day, in the form of a treasure hunt. It was very much different from our own botanic gardens because they are not really a botanic gardens but are an extension to the KARC. They handle reasearch there but open their doors to the public to raise funds to fund their research. Really interesting. That was pretty much all we did that day. So yeah. Pretty good fun.

Thursday:

FIELD STUDIES!!! We had good fun doing them. We were split into three groups. One handled water testing, one handled pond dipping and mine handled the drgaonfly survey. I thought mine wasn't as much fun but certainly learnt alot. But dragonflies are hard to spot when you're looking for the a specific one. haha. So basically we had to simply count the number of each type of species of dragonfly and take note of it. Pretty interesting. Oh yeah, I forgot to mention, we held our field studies at the Hong Kong Wetland Park, not even opened to the public! That was really cool.

Firday & Saturday:

These two days were simply just more for the presentation of our papers. Friday morning we visited the sewage treatment plant. Interesting, but still wonder how they ensure they remove all the bacteria from the water though. They use bacteria to remove the bacteria but where does the bacteria they used get removed to? (Maybe that's why my towel turned pink after a few showers) lol.

Anyway, that's about it. Was god fun though. This week for lessons was just all revision and the revision questions. I finally finished the questions on thursday so i handed it in and got it back that day. Should be set for bio, (Hopefully)

Gotta go. Exams next week!!!!

Posted by Justin Poh at 9:10 PM | Permalink | Comments

Hi people!! I'm away on conference in HK. The 2nd HK student science conference. The theme is conservation and sustainable development. So i'll c ya when i'm back

Bye!!

Posted by Justin Poh at 9:09 PM | Permalink | Comments

Hello. I forgot to blog for week 4 so here's the recount of what i can still remember. Here goes......

K. This week, we did our IA. It was a short week because of good friday so the week only had four days. this week also co-incidentally was actually time for revision as well. So we started doing the bio questions. Interesting how much you find you don't know in biology. haha. Anyway, lets take things systematically. Practical first.

For prac this week, we did our IA. I thought it would be a simple prac where we just test all the liquids and get a result. However, not so easy. Apparently, the liquids had been tampered with as in they had been purposely made cloudy and things like that to tamper with the results of tests such as the ethanol emulsion test. Also, the biuret's test proved useless as well as everything that we tested returned negative. So we were down to the iodine and the benedict's test which proved somewhat useful but without the other two tests, identifying the source would not be as reliable as i would like it. So i tried anyway. Hopefully i get a good mark. Its not called IA for nothing.

For theory this week, as i mentioned earlier, we did revison questions. But i always find some questions which are wierd. " what is a cell?" ???!?!?!!!?!?!? what kind of question is that?! Not attacking anyone but if the answer was a sack containing organelles, what kind of question is that?! I always will find this kind of wierd question. So strange. But otherwise the rerst was fine. Just needed a little recap and i'm back on track. As mentioned earlier, short week so we only had like 1 or 2 lessons where we did reeview questions. haha

That's about all we did for this week. Next week i'm going hong kong so no post next week. will recount in week 6 entry.

C ya ppl!!

Posted by Justin Poh at 8:59 PM | Permalink | Comments

This week was one of the more exciting weeks of the term so far. For practicals, we conducted a frog disection. Pretty interesting, good for aspiring surgeons. I may upload some pics but not now. they're a little gory. haha. For theory, we wrapped up chapter 5 and moved to chapter 6, so essentially, we're ready for revision for the mid year exams.

I'll start with practical as usual. This week, we did frog disection. its pretty interesting but kinda makes you pity the frog a little. haha. Pithing the frog is actually stil kinda inhumane. Overdosing the frog with chloroform is actually the most humane, simply because you don't destroy any part of the frog, at least until disection. So after pithing the frogs, cutting the skin was the next step. Actually, the skin isn't the most difficult to cut thourgh but the scalpel could've been a little sharper. Would've helped alot, especially in the next step.

After cutting the skin, the skin has to be pinned down. We were doing the disection on trays of wax so the skin was pinned to the wax. After securing the skin, the muscle layer had to be cut through to see the organs. However, a major blood vessel ran right through the middle. As such, the only way to cleanly carry out the procedure was to make two small incisions left and right prallel to each other of the blood vesssel, then thread a string through the incisions so that the strings may be tied and will seal of the vessel on the left and right, thus leaving a clear area to cut the vessel without much blood. Interesting stuff which needs considering.

After cutting through the muscle layer, the organs are basically all there to see. The heart was one of the most interesting ones as if it is stroked with the instrument known as the seeker, the heart can be seen beating. I've got a video, but its not the clearest. I'll upload it onto youtube soon so that you can view it if you wish. Its not the best resolution either so.. yeah....

Anyway, that's about it for practicals. For theory, we finished off the chapter on nutrition and began on animal nutrition. Actually, both chapters are just as depressing cause wat we're eating is acually all not that great for us, especially in the quatities we consume them in. So yeah kinda gives a new twist to life... haha XD

Anyway, that's about it this week, i may post again because i haven written about the science conference yet. hhaha...

Till then......

Posted by Justin Poh at 2:56 AM | Permalink | Comments