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The lab uses blackworms (Lumbriculus variegatus) to test the effects of different drugs/chemical on heart rate. It takes a small investment in organisms (blackworms from Carolina) and equipment (capillary pipettes from Fisher) as well as in technique (loading worms into capillary tubes and finding the heart beat). But students mastered the technique well and were able to get lots of practice designing their own experiments. This lab can be used in place of the Daphnia physiology lab or as an introduction to experimental design early in the year.

Teacher Guide
Student Lab
Directions for making tape well slide for holding worms -- I think this looks like a great solution for holding and observing worms instead of the capillary tubes.
Charles Drewes' Invertebrate Biology Web site -- This Web site is a GREAT resource for many more ideas on possible labs for biology class. Unfortunately Charles Drewes passed away in 2005, but his Web site and resources are still maintained by the EEOB department at Iowa State.
Paula Donham's Blog post -- Read the suggestion Paula has on introducing this lab with a twist!

This laboratory exercise is designed to give high school students experience in using the scientific method. Students design & conduct their own research studies on the behavior of Siamese Fighting Fish (Betta splendens) in classroom aquaria. Included in the laboratory materials is a "Study Proposal Form" that students use to structure their research designs. Download my adaptation of the lab.

Adapted from a lab performed at Cornell Institute for Biology Teachers. The original was written by Walter Peck & Ron Walker. Download the original CIBT lab.

Students will investigate the food preferences of garden slugs (Arion subfuscus) using simple equipment including margarine tubs, graph paper, scissors, and common plants, both wild and cultivated. The exercise is genuine scientific research in that: a) the student devises his/her own research question about slug feeding behavior, and b) the results are truly unknown to the student-experimenter (and possibly to the instructor) prior to the experiment. In carrying out the complete set of experiments described below, students learn that one way to achieve precision and accuracy is by designing experiments with many replicates.

Originally developed by Cornell Institute for Biology Teachers.

This laboratory exercise is presented as an alternative to the traditional AP Diffusion and Osmosis lab. I always felt the "official" lab skimped in some spots (like the analysis questions) but went into too much abstract discussion of water potential and lost the students in Greek letter formulas. So here is an adaptation where the explanations have been clarified and the summary questions have been expanded. I have broken the lab up into 4 parts and I have students complete ALL parts sequentially.

Lab A: Diffusion Through a Membrane
Lab B: Osmosis Through a Membrane
Lab C: Osmosis in a Plant Cell -- Plant Cell Plasmolysis
Lab D: Osmosis Challenges -- students have to figure out how to solve these challenges using the skills they just learned.

Teachers please note: I have not included "Exercise 1B" (the dialysis tubing cells in the different sucrose solutions) from the AP Lab in this adaptation because I do that as an inquiry lab after the students attain the skills through this lab. (I put out the 6 beakers of solutions -- 0M, 0.2M, 0.4M, 0.6M, 0.8M, 1.0M sucrose -- but make believe they have been mixed up and mislabeled, then challenge the students to devise a method to determine the relative molarity of the beakers.) It is part of Lab D in this list.

In this lab, students will be viewing sections of tissue containing mitotic cells and determining what stages each of the cells is in and estimating how long each stage lasts. They will also be comparing normal cells and cancer cells to see how mitosis is altered in cancer cells.