Honors Biology Syllabus
Week of February 16, 2016
Black History Fact: Lincoln University in Pennsylvania is the first institution of higher education founded for
African-Americans. It paved the way for the 104 other historically black colleges, which have produced
distinguished alums like Thurgood Marshall, Spike Lee, and the almighty Oprah.
Big Idea: Evidence indicates that a sequence of chemical event preceded the origin of life on Earth and that
life has evolved continuously since that time.
Standard: Evolution
Vocabulary: evidence based research, fossil, paleontologist, relative dating, law of superposition, radiometric
dating, half-life, geologic time scale, epoch, period, era, eon, Cambrian explosion, K-T boundary, plate
tectonics, spontaneous generation, theory of biogenesis, endosymbiont theory
Tuesday, February 16th
Warm-Up / Quiz: C14 S1
Classwork: Finish bioethics presentations; KW of KWL of endosymbiosis
Homework: Complete page 411, 1 thru 10; Convert the question into a comprehensive statement
Exit Pass: L – What did you learn about endosymbiosis?
Black History Fact: Emmett Chappelle (10/25/25 - ) - African American scientist and researcher and a recipient
of 14 U.S. patents, who discovered that a particular combination of chemicals caused all living organisms to emit light.
Wednesday, February 17th
Warm-Up / Quiz: Sign in to Quia using and take the vocabulary quiz.
Classwork: Who wants to be a millionaire? Access and play on-line games and review quizzes for chapter 14.
Homework: WRITING: You will be assigned a question from pages 411- 413. Correct responses as well as
grammar, spelling and sentence structure will be graded according to the science writing rubric.
Exit Pass: Reply to my email containing your homework assignment along with the writing rubric.
Black History Fact: Ernest Everett Just (8/14/1883 – 10/27/ 1941). African American biologist and author
known for his work on egg fertilization and the structure of the cell.
Thursday, February 18th
Warm-Up / Quiz: Modern Ideas
Classwork: Four Corners: Review for exam using large and small group methods; create a study guide
Homework: Use your study guide recap
Exit Pass: Four corners – what is the work that you have cut out for you?
Black History Fact: In 2008, Jamaican sprinter Usain Bolt became the first man to ever set three world records
in a single Olympic games.
Friday, February 19th
Classwork: Chapter 14 Assessment; Gravitational Waves Detected!
Homework: Think about the significance of evidence based research.
Exit Pass: What can you do to increase your learning potential?
Black History Fact: Mae Jemison (10/17/56 -) American physician and NASA astronaut known for being the first
black woman to travel in space.
Objectives:
 Read for information
 Compare earth’s early and present environments
 Sequence a typical fossilization process
 Compare spontaneous generation and biogenesis
 Describe the endosymbiont theory
Quia.com/pages/biologywithhughes.html
Gravitational waves detected -- and that's creating waves in science
By Todd Leopold, CNN
Just over 100 years after he published his general theory of relativity, scientists have found what Albert Einstein
predicted as part of the theory: gravitational waves. "We have detected gravitational waves. We did it," said
David Reitze, executive director of LIGO, the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory, which
was created to do just what Reitze announced. Reitze made the announcement Thursday at the National Press
Club in Washington surrounded by other LIGO researchers and National Science Foundation head France
Cordova.
The gravitational waves -- ripples in space-time -- were created by the merging of two black holes, Reitze said.
One black hole had the mass of 29 suns; the other was the equivalent of 36 suns. Each was perhaps 50
kilometers (30 miles) in diameter. More than a billion years ago -- LIGO estimates about 1.3 billion -- the two
collided at half the speed of light. Gravitational waves pass through everything, so the result traveled through
the universe for that time before reaching Earth.
The 'chirp' of black holes colliding
The gravitational waves stretched and compressed space around Earth "like Jell-O," said Reitze. However, the
waves are so small that it takes a detector like LIGO, capable of measuring distortions one-thousandth the size
of a proton, to observe them. They were observed on September 14, 2015.
Scientists heard the sound of the black holes colliding as a "chirp" lasting one-fifth of a second. Though
gravitational waves aren't sound waves, the increase in frequency the collision exhibited in its last milliseconds
-- when the black holes were mere kilometers apart and growing closer -- is a frequency we can hear, said
Deirdre Shoemaker, a Georgia Tech physicist who works on LIGO.
LIGO is described as "a system of two identical detectors" -- one located in Livingston, Louisiana, the other in
Hanford, Washington -- "carefully constructed to detect incredibly tiny vibrations from passing gravitational
waves." The project was created by scientists from Caltech and MIT and funded by the National Science
Foundation. Szabolcs Marka, a physicist at Columbia University who is leader of the LIGO member Columbia
Experimental Gravity Group, said you could think of it as "a cosmic microphone."
Einstein's concepts
Gravitational waves were predicted by Einstein in his general theory of relativity in 1915, the theory that
proposed space-time as a concept. The waves are a distortion of space-time. However, in order for us to detect
them, they needed to be created by a mammoth event -- for example, the collision of two black holes. Black
holes are a holy grail of the gravitational wave concept. To date, we'd been able only to see their after-effects.
Black holes themselves were a conjecture.
"There's been a lot of indirect evidence for their existence," says Shoemaker, an expert in black holes. "But this
is the first time we actually detect two black holes merging and we know the only thing that predicts that (is)
gravitational radiation, (which) comes from a binary black hole merging. There's no other way we could have
seen that but gravitationally."
'Now we can listen to the universe'
But is LIGO correct? Have we really detected gravitational waves? Scientists have what they call a "fivesigma" standard of proof, and LIGO's researchers say the gravitational wave discovery exceeds that. "It took
six months of convincing ourselves that it was correct," says Shoemaker. "It goes beyond that five-sigma to
proving that nothing was happening with the equipment that couldn't be understood." She's thrilled with the
possibilities.
"Imagine having never been able to hear before and all you can do is see," she says. "Now we can listen to the
universe where we were deaf before. It's a different spectrum (from the electromagnetic spectrum). It's unlike
anything we've ever detected before."
"What's really exciting is what comes next," said Reitze at the announcement. "I think we're opening a window
on the universe -- a window of gravitational wave astronomy."
Einstein would be surprised
Columbia University physicist Marka, who's been working on the project for more than a decade, said the
discovery will open up new horizons, including direct tests of Einstein's general theory. Those could further
support it -- or force physicists to come up with new ideas.
"A physicist is always looking for a flaw in a theory. And the only way to find a flaw is to test it," Marka told
CNN. "Einstein's theory did not present any flaws to us yet, and that is really scary. Physicists are very
(skeptical) of flawless theories because then we have nothing to do."
Ironically, Einstein didn't think gravitational waves would be discovered.
"He thought gravitational waves are a beautiful construct, but they are so small nobody would ever be able to
actually measure it," said Marka.
CNN's Rachel Crane and Claudia Morales contributed to this story.
http://www.cnn.com/2016/02/11/us/gravitational-waves-feat/
Write a paragraph describing how Einstein’s hypothesis could become theory. Include
the following words, evidence based research, hypothesis, theory, indirect evidence, fivesigma" standard of proof.