The One About Teaching a Lab Class
Aug. 30th, 2012 02:57 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
tanarillThe thing is, the thing is, the thing is, it turns out that even the undergrads who want to learn are pretty stupid. Not ignorant, stupid. It is as follows:
Reactants 1+2 -> Product 3, in the presence of enzyme A. Enzyme A, Reactant 1, and Reactant 2 are all colorless. Product 3, however, is peach-colored. How do you tell if there is Enzyme A in a given colorless clear liquid?
If your answer was "add Reactants 1 and 2 and wait to see if it turns peach-colored," you are smarter than my students! This is an example of basic logic, the only part you had never done before was the part where we actually measured to see how much color there was. And that's not that hard because we have a machine for it, so it is really "push the button" levels of difficulty!
They didn't have trouble with the experiment where we took some sea urchin eggs and some sea urchin sperm and mixed them under on a microscope slide. Admittedly, they were surprised at how much smaller the average sperm is in comparison to the average egg.
The last thing we did was perform a transformation, when we put plasmid -> bacteria. To simplify this, we used a plasmid that codes for a protein that glows in the dark. It is very easy to tell if you did it right then, because it glows in the dark. All but one group did.
Then I had four days to grade 26 lab notebooks. That was hideous.
So, in conclusion: prefer sections over teaching labs, always. At least in section, you have the chance to answer the damn questions!
Reactants 1+2 -> Product 3, in the presence of enzyme A. Enzyme A, Reactant 1, and Reactant 2 are all colorless. Product 3, however, is peach-colored. How do you tell if there is Enzyme A in a given colorless clear liquid?
If your answer was "add Reactants 1 and 2 and wait to see if it turns peach-colored," you are smarter than my students! This is an example of basic logic, the only part you had never done before was the part where we actually measured to see how much color there was. And that's not that hard because we have a machine for it, so it is really "push the button" levels of difficulty!
They didn't have trouble with the experiment where we took some sea urchin eggs and some sea urchin sperm and mixed them under on a microscope slide. Admittedly, they were surprised at how much smaller the average sperm is in comparison to the average egg.
The last thing we did was perform a transformation, when we put plasmid -> bacteria. To simplify this, we used a plasmid that codes for a protein that glows in the dark. It is very easy to tell if you did it right then, because it glows in the dark. All but one group did.
Then I had four days to grade 26 lab notebooks. That was hideous.
So, in conclusion: prefer sections over teaching labs, always. At least in section, you have the chance to answer the damn questions!
