Exam Study Guide: Biogeochemical cycles and Scientific Method PDF

Exam 1 Study Guide -- slides 1-6 Biogeochemical cycles This study guide is meant to help you walk through the material we have covered that will be on Exam 1. It is not meant to cover every detail about each subject, but is to help you see some of the types of questions you might see on this exam....

Exam 1 Study Guide -- slides 1-6 Biogeochemical cycles This study guide is meant to help you walk through the material we have covered that will be on Exam 1. It is not meant to cover every detail about each subject, but is to help you see some of the types of questions you might see on this exam. Not all of this material will be covered, and there may be some material missing that questions could come from. Use this to review your notes, slides, and textbook sections to feel comfortable explaining these concepts/questions. General rules for studying -- backed by cognitive science and learning models - Rather than looking up the answers/information posted below, see how much you know by quizzing yourself first. Work through each definition or process and write down what you know about the topic. If you find yourself unable to answer -- come back to it after finishing the others. If you are stumped, look it up! - Your brain acts like muscles -- the more you work, the stronger it gets. But you don't go to the gym for 5 hours and then have the ability to bench press a car or run a 4 minute mile. It takes time and repetition. - Don't use all of your brain power at once! Set aside 30-45 minutes to look over information at a time. Giving your brain a chance to rest helps move information from short term to long term memory. Cramming for long periods of time simply does not work the way you want it to. - Leave distractions behind -- it is easy to have your studying time interrupted by the flash or sound of your phone, the lyric to the song you are listening to catch your ear, or action on the TV nearby. Multi-tasking is a myth: you cannot effectively focus/study if there is music, TV, people talking, or texts popping up. It is hard to do, but switch off the phone, and go to a quiet place like a study room or the library where you can focus if you are working alone. - Study together -- work through the questions, writing down what you know. Before looking it up, ask a study partner to explain it. Nothing prepares students better than being able to teach material to someone else. - Get your rest -- studying to the wee hours before an exam will exhaust your body and brain. Study in measured amounts over multiple study sessions/days and go to bed! Science/Scientific Method - Steps of the scientific method - How science is a cyclical and iterative process - How does an experiment build on previous work? - How experiments are designed - Why is it better to have 100 replications of an experiment rather than 10? - Control vs treatment - Scientific theories vs Scientific Law - What does objectivity mean? - Parsimony- what does it mean? - Becoming an informed consumer of information/knowing that people have different motivations - Who is presenting the information to you? Why? What is life? - Can you define what life is? - What are the essential things that living things do that non-living thigs do not? - How is life organized? - Where in the organizational hierarchy does something become life? - Are molecules of DNA life? Proteins? - What is an emergent property? - Where does energy come from? How is it harnessed by plants? How do animals gather energy? What happens to the energy contained in a body when it dies? - Explain the concept of internal constancy -- what is homeostasis? - How does a species evolve? (in general) - What are the 3 domains of life? - What are the general characteristics of cells in each domain? Basics of chemistry - The subatomic particles that make up atom/element - How electrons orbit the nucleus of an atom and are important for bonding - Chemical bonding - Covalent - Polar covalent - Ionic - Hydrogen bonding - What electronegativity means and how it relates to bond formation - Partial charges and hydrogen bonds - The unique properties of water and how hydrogen bonding makes those unique properties work - Water - What types of bonds hold the oxygen and hydrogen bonds together in a water molecule? Andy what type of bond forms between water molecules other water molecules? - Water properties -- explain what they are, how they function, and why they are important to living things - Cohesion - Surface tension - Adhesion - Capillary action - Regulation of temperature -- water is slow to heat and cool, holds lots of energy in all those hydrogen bonds - It requires energy to break hydrogen bonds and free water molecules to be evaporated -- think of boiling water or evaporating sweat - Water expands as it freezes - Water as a solvent: Why can things dissolve in water? Can all things dissolve in water? - What is a solvent? - What is a solute? - What is a solution? - What do hydrophilic and hydrophobic mean? - Which kinds of molecules are hydrophilic and hydrophobic? - Define diffusion and explain what drives it. - What is a concentration gradient? - How (which direction) do molecules move along that gradient? - What properties control how quickly molecules diffuse? - What is equilibrium? - - What is pH a measure of? What does it mean to be acidic or basic (alkaline) or neutral? - Why does pH matter to: - Cells - Fish - Humans - Plants - What happens to proteins when pH changes? Organic Macromolecules: - Why do we eat? - Energy - Chemical building blocks (nutrients) - Can you summarize how what you eat is turned into your cells? - - What makes a molecule organic? - What do dehydration synthesis and hydrolysis reactions do? - What do the terms hydrophilic and hydrophobic mean? What types of molecules fit into each? - Be able to explain the basics of the structure and functions of: - Carbohydrates - Proteins - Nucleic acids - Lipids - What are the names of the monomers and polymers for the 3 major classes of organic molecules - Carbohydrates - Proteins - Nucleic acids - What are the major components of triglycerides and phospholipids? - Where can they be found in a human diet? - Can all of these molecules be used for energy? - What is an R-group in an amino acid? What kinds of properties do R-groups have? How do they shape the three dimensional structure of a protein? - What are the 4 levels of organization of proteins? - What happens to proteins if they are exposed to conditions outside of a normal body? Can they still function? Nutrient cycles - How water moves through both living and non-living systems - The properties of water and how why they are important to life - How humans impact water systems - - Consider how nitrogen, carbon, phosphorus, exist in nature as inorganic nutrients, are taken in by plants and converted into organic macromolecules. That this makes these nutrients available to animals by being able to eat them, and break down plant carbohydrates, proteins, lipids, and nucleic acids into their monomers and use those building blocks for synthesizing their own carbohydrates, proteins, lipids, nucleic acids. - - How Nitrogen moves through both living and non living systems - Major uses of nitrogen for organisms - In what form do plants take up nitrogen? How do animals get nitrogen containing compounds? - What humans use nitrogen for outside our bodies and how we interact with the nitrogen cycle - - How phosphorus moves through living and non-living systems - Major uses for phosphorus in organisms - - How carbon moves through living an non-living systems - What carbon is used for by life - Energy generation - Carbon building blocks to build macromolecules - How carbon cycles rapidly (CO2 converted to glucose, then broken down for energy, back to CO2), has intermediate storage (starch, glycogen), and long term storage in living systems (cellulose, fats, DNA, proteins) - Fossil sources of carbon and how humans make use of those carbon sources - Human impacts on the carbon cycle - - The importance of decomposers in recycling nutrients from living systems back into the soil so they can be taken up by plants and move through the food chain again