Diffusion Lab Self Assessment

Critical and Reflective Thinking:

Photo of a page from my Diffusion Lab.

Critical thinking was my main core competency used in this lab. Biology is a hard course for me, so I had to take more time and ask myself more questions to make sure I fully understood what was happening and could answer the questions. To do this, tools that helped me were looking at our note package about the Cell Membrane, and also looking through the textbook a little bit to gather more information.

I analyzed evidence to come to conclusions, by looking at the qualitative changes that occurred during our lab, as well as the quantitative ones. An example of a qualitative change that led me to believe diffusion had occurred, was the change in color of the tubing contents inside (a dark blue). An example of a quantitative change was the increase in mass of the tubing after one night. The mass increased, meaning diffusion into the tubing had definitely occurred.

COMMUNICATING:

I expressed communication through figuring out how to explain my understanding in words for the written portion of the lab. I tried to use as many scientific terms from the unit as I could to best represent what I knew. I looked back at the note package several times as my source for the terms I used in my lab.

For me to communicate my understanding, I need to really understand what I am writing about otherwise it makes it really difficult to explain what you don’t know. Even though this lab was a bit hard for me, I believe I answered the questions well in the end, and to the best of my ability and knowledge I had at the time. I learned that instead of trying to answer from the top of my head from what I knew at that moment, my answers were a lot better when I consulted the textbook/note package to back up my information.

Communicating was also a very important tool in talking with my partner and other two partners about what was happening during and after the experiment so that we could learn from and help one another out. This is really helpful for me as I learn best auditory and visually, so by talking to my partners, and seeing the chemical changes occur in our tube, it made it a lot easier for me to understand what was happening.