biology – Kaitlyn's Ap Biology Site

Over the 2017-2018 school year, I have been a part of the AP Biology class. This class was special because I was in the class every day rather than normal block schedule. Because I had the class every day I felt that our class got an advantage to the AP test in comparison to other AP courses at the school. We ultimately got the most time to prepare for the AP Biology exam on May 14.

With that being said, after taking the AP Bio exam I am feeling confident that I passed. The multiple choice part of the exam was very much like our tests in class so I felt good with that part. However, for the short answer questions, I felt that I was rushing to get everything I wanted to say down on the page. Also for one of the questions, there was only half a page designated for the answer which I struggled trying to condense my thoughts to fit on the lines. Overall, I felt prepared for the exam through all of our preparation in class with practicing tips and tricks and the material. If you have a chance to take AP Biology, I highly recommend taking the class, biology is super interesting!

Exam

May 17, 2018 by kaitlynoshiro Tags: ap, ap bio, ap bio test, ap biology, ap biology test, ap test, bio, biology, reflection, test, work 2 Comments

Botany of Desire is a documentary by PBS which discusses human interaction with plants. There are four main chapters of the documentary: How Sweet, Beauty, Cannabis, and Potato. The first chapter, How Sweet, talks about apples and their history within the United States. Throughout time, apples have once been sold with a wide variety, but now there are only a handful of apple species we eat. In the past, wild apple trees were abundant and those apples, because of their bitterness, were used to make hard cider. Apple orchards are only growing a monoculture, one variety, of apples because those are the apples that will be sold and eaten. However, there are still people who grow, what they call, antique varieties of apples. Because most of these apples are not sweet enough to be on the market, the growers use the apples to make hard cider.

The next chapter is Beauty which discusses flowers, specifically tulips. In the past there was a tulip bulb market because tulips were a sign of high status and wealth. However, the tulip trade was hurting the European economy so tulips were now seen negatively. Today, tulips are still seen as beautiful and there are now breeders that create new varieties of tulips, these breeders are called human bees. There are tulip farms all around the world and flowers are a multi-billion dollar trade.

Following flowers, the discussion about cannabis is presented. Cannabis, also known as weed, marijuana, or pot, has been a controversial topic for the past several decades. According to the documentary 15 million Americans smoke cannabis per month. Another interesting fact about intoxicants that was presented in the chapter was that in every society there are about 1-2 intoxicants accepted and promoted but the rest are condemned such as alcohol is widely accepted in Western society. Because marijuana farms in Mexico were being taken down by United States forces, marijuana growers mixed two cannabis plants to make the new version, short to be able to grow the plant inside and unintentionally made the plant more potent.

Lastly, the discussion ends on potatoes. Potatoes are a substantial food source since 1/2 acre of land for growing potatoes can provide enough for a family to survive for a year. Thus potatoes were adapted by Europe to end the famine. However, the single potato species in Ireland were destroyed by a disease and led Ireland into an awful famine killing many people. To avoid this famine to ever happen again, scientists genetically modified potatoes and now use an abundance of pesticides. However, the moral of the documentary evidenced by each chapter, is for farmers and society to stay away from monoculture.