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Basic science: understanding experiments
Basic science: understanding experiments

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3.5 Week 3 summary

Figure _unit3.6.1 Figure 6

Congratulations on completing Week 3. Who knew yeast was so important in human history?

While the experiments you’ve carried out over the last three weeks have been necessarily simple enough for you to perform at home, with little risk of accidentally constructing a doomsday device or incinerating your pets or family, they are important experiments in explaining how the world around us works. Hopefully, you’ve also developed skills in carrying out scientific experiments and how you can identify and alter variables to test a hypothesis further.

In the final week of the course, the difficulty level ramps up a notch, as you will be using some household items to separate and extract the DNA from a living organism!

To conduct next week’s experiment, you will need:

  • kiwi fruit (or another fruit of your choice)
  • methylated spirits, chilled in freezer for 30 minutes (or vodka or strong white rum)
  • fine sieve or filter paper
  • salt
  • washing-up liquid
  • measuring beaker
  • a paperclip.

Remember, methylated spirits are extremely hazardous and should only be used with adult supervision.

You can now go to Week 4 [Tip: hold Ctrl and click a link to open it in a new tab. (Hide tip)] .