How to Make a Good Scientific Model
Are your students able to generate observations and then construct a good scientific model? After your students complete an inquiry activity, use our scientific model checklist to guide them through constructing and refining a model. Encourage students to use the checklist to ensure their model is sound. Allow lab groups to switch models and critique them. Go […]
Five Misconceptions in Genetics
Students may bring a variety of misconceptions with them when they enter a study of genetics. Watch your classroom for the 5 common misconceptions listed below. If you find any of them, just use the simple explanations—also provided below—to dispel your students’ incorrect notions. 1. One set of alleles is responsible for determining each trait, […]
Introducing the Chi-Square Test Through Inquiry
Adapted from a creative statistics lesson taught by master science educator Mark Krotec, this pre-lab investigation introduces the value of statistics, the inherent qualities of uncertainty, and data interpretation. Students are asked to discredit the claim that their teacher possesses psychic ability by using a clever card trick, a careful experimental design protocol, and the application of the chi-square test.
Improvements to AP® Biology and AP® Chemistry Kits
Discover new features in kits that support the AP® curriculum and your classroom. Over the past several years, we have changed our AP® Biology and AP® Chemistry teaching and learning materials based on input from teachers and students, as well as on changes to the curricula. Now our Carolina Investigations® for Use with AP® Biology […]
Which PCR Kit Is Right for You?
We’ve made PCR accessible to all classrooms by providing a variety of kits from which to choose.
Which Electrophoresis Kit Is Right for You?
Use this companion guide to compare kit characteristics so you can prepare yourself and your lab accordingly.
Electrophoresis of DNA is a fundamental technique in biotechnology that covers a variety of subject material on the structure and function of DNA. Carolina makes the study of electrophoresis attainable for any classroom by offering a number of kits that include valuable teacher resources.
Cheese Making
An Interdisciplinary Science Exploration Evidence suggests that people have been making cheese for at least several thousand years. In the 1970s, an archeologist named Peter Bogucki excavated a site in Poland and found fragments of pottery left by people who had lived there approximately 7,000 years earlier. The fragments he found, like some pottery found […]
How Green Fluorescent Protein Is Used in Research
From Jellyfish to the Bench Green fluorescent protein (GFP) is used in teaching biotechnology, genetics, and AP® Biology. What is the significance of this protein other than allowing students to create fluorescent green bacteria? Perhaps your students have seen news headlines about transgenic animals that fluoresce green under ultraviolet (UV) light because the gene for […]
Making Scents of the World
Nobel Prize-Winning Research My terrier, Harley, spends most of his life with his nose to the ground. The intensity of his olfactory surveillance makes me think that the world must smell entirely different to him than it does to me. Recent research on the molecular genetics of sensory receptors gives us a clue to Harley […]
The Fast Plant Life Cycle
Let Wisconsin Fast Plants® Grow on You! Wisconsin Fast Plants® are so captivating to watch as they grow and develop that even students who are tough to reach become engaged and attached to them. Time after time, I saw students I least expected to be interested in anything science come to my class during a […]