Reminder from 4/22 Training for the week of 4/25 (Lab 5, Part 2)

Here are the reminders from Friday's training. 

1) Recitation: Energy Skate Park

Links: Energy Skate Park (v 1.1): Energy Skate Park

NOTE: Make sure that your students are running "Energy Skate Park" and not "Energy Skate Park: Basics."

(Please encourage the students to work collaboratively, using the whiteboards and markers. The recitation papers are on the printer table at the back of the room.)

(Break)--Pass back graded Lab 4 reports, if you have not yet done so.... 

2) Lab 5, Part 2

This is the CAPSTONE lab for 1st semester, employing all the experimental skills and physics concepts we have learned in labs 1 through 4 this semester.  We will be testing students' ability to classify motion and then using the classified motion to gain a deeper understanding of the energetic workings inside a living cell.

a) Numbers I gave to you that students might ask about/want:  The maximum rate of ATP hydrolysis for a single motor protein is on the order of 300 Hz.  (Remember that I also gave you the viscosity for salt water in the TA document.)  If they have failed to measure the vesicle size from the video and no longer have this info, they can use the vesicle diameter as 2 microns.

b) Students will need to:

• Figure out how to get the average velocity of their directed vesicles (from their log-log plots or from their spreadsheet data).
• Determine whether they want to model kinesin or myosin motors (and justify the choice).
• Find the rate of ATP hydrolization.  Think about what this means for the kinesin/vesicle.
• Find the effective viscosity.  Think about what this means for the cytosol/vesicle.
• Write a report presenting and analyzing their findings.
• Present their work to their classmates (posters).

c) You might consider directing the students to Google cytoskeletal structure images or motor protein functions to help them put the numbers they are getting into context.  If they need some help figuring out the myosin/kinesin issue, send them to the page I got the cell structure stuff from (foot-noted in the TA document, a British Cell Bio Society webpage...).  

d) If students are getting very funky slopes for their log-log plots, chances are they have either made a bad conversion or done something funky in analyzing their times (I fixed a few bad slopes by tracking time analysis).  The 'random' stuff is likely to have a slope of roughly 1 or even less (random or caged).  The 'directed' stuff is likely to have a slope of 1.5 to 2 (biological to directed at constant speed).

e) After students have turned in their lab reports, please bring these to me in 1322 and I will scan them and get them back to you.

3) Other Logistics:

a) You should email me immediately if any students miss Lab 5, Part 2.  I need to add them to the email about the make-up labs.  Also, please email me if you have any extra students, too, so that I can make sure a student attending a different lab section than their normal one is not accidentally considered completely absent from the second week of lab.

b) We have training this coming Friday, 4/29, to train for the final recitation, the surveys, and the make-up lab (which will occur during the week of May 2nd).

That's all I can think of for now.  Let me know if you have any questions or concerns.  Keep up the great work!

~KIM