Population Growth in Yeasts
Copyright 2016 Denise W. Carlson. Used with permission.
This lesson is the second of two that explore cellular respiration and population growth in yeasts. In the first lesson, students set up a simple way to indirectly observe and quantify the amount of respiration occurring in yeast-molasses cultures. Based on questions that arose during the first lesson and its associated activity, students in this lesson work in small groups to design experiments that determine how environmental factors affect yeast population growth.
This lesson and its associated activity include biomedical, chemical and environmental engineering topics covering elements of biotechnology, applications of experimental and analytical techniques in living systems, food processing, in particular, the consumption of alcohol and its effects on the human body.
After this lesson, students should be able to:
- Explain why scientific experiments include controls.
- Describe an example of a controlled experiment.
- Explain the role of variables in scientific experiments.
- State the variable(s) when given a description of an experiment.
- Explain why sample size can be important in a scientific experiment.