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March 28, 2024, 08:15:24 pm

Author Topic: VCE Biology Question Thread  (Read 3570331 times)  Share 

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vox nihili

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Re: VCE Biology Question Thread
« Reply #9135 on: April 28, 2017, 08:30:45 pm »
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I have a couple of questions:
The study design says we must know about "RNA processing" - is this the same as post transcription modification?
Also, the textbook talks about "alternative splicing of pre-mRNA", but I can't find any mention of that in the study design. Do we need to know about it?
Thanks!  :)


Yep, same thing :)

No, you don't need to know about it. Said that just the other day in response to one of your posts!! :p
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Apricot

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Re: VCE Biology Question Thread
« Reply #9136 on: April 29, 2017, 10:17:31 pm »
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As Sine said, you can use non-VCAA and VCAA exams as revision, however those are more for exam revision. For SAC revision it is good to do exam style questions, but checkpoints does ruin the VCAA exams you will be doing at the end of the year, so I'd recommend using NEAP study questions as they are similar to checkpoints and allow targeted revision using exam style questions but are not just copied and pasted from VCAA exams.

With these neap study questions you've mentioned, I read about them and a few people said there are mistakes with how the questions and answers are worded and also that sometimes they get too outside of the study design. Is this true to a large extent?


vox nihili

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Re: VCE Biology Question Thread
« Reply #9137 on: April 30, 2017, 12:09:43 am »
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With these neap study questions you've mentioned, I read about them and a few people said there are mistakes with how the questions and answers are worded and also that sometimes they get too outside of the study design. Is this true to a large extent?



It's hard to tell because it's a new study design this year with some fairly major changes :)

Personally, I didn't like NEAP exams very much when I used them. There were indeed too many mistakes and far too many of the questions were too challenging for a VCE student, which only makes you feel like crap after doing the exam rather than really contributing to your learn tbh.
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Quantum44

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Re: VCE Biology Question Thread
« Reply #9138 on: April 30, 2017, 07:56:59 am »
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It's hard to tell because it's a new study design this year with some fairly major changes :)

Personally, I didn't like NEAP exams very much when I used them. There were indeed too many mistakes and far too many of the questions were too challenging for a VCE student, which only makes you feel like crap after doing the exam rather than really contributing to your learn tbh.

I feel like NEAP is a viable alternative to checkpoints for SAC revision, given that VCAA exams should be the cornerstone of your exam revision and checkpoints does ruin the VCAA exams. NEAP is generally more challenging than the actual exam, but I think that's a good thing.
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vox nihili

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Re: VCE Biology Question Thread
« Reply #9139 on: April 30, 2017, 10:27:40 am »
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I feel like NEAP is a viable alternative to checkpoints for SAC revision, given that VCAA exams should be the cornerstone of your exam revision and checkpoints does ruin the VCAA exams. NEAP is generally more challenging than the actual exam, but I think that's a good thing.

Moral of the story guys: try it out and see whether you like it or not :)
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pmmenotes

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Re: VCE Biology Question Thread
« Reply #9140 on: April 30, 2017, 02:28:40 pm »
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Hey can someone please look at my prac and give me suggestions/feedback on what i need to change etc? thanks in advance  :)
Write an AIM for your investigation.

To investigate the effect changes in temperature has on the catalyse enzyme function.

Write an appropriate hypothesis for your experiment.

If the reaction rate is determined by the temperature then the increase in temperature between a range of 25 degrees C to 50 degrees C will speed up the rate of reaction in the catalyse enzyme and will be displayed by the height of oxygen bubbles formed.


Indentify the appropriate variables that you will be considering during your experiment.


]DEPENDENT VARIABLE: Height of oxygen bubbles formed
INDEPENDENT VARIABLE: Changes in temperature, ice, 25 degrees C, 37 degrees C, 50 degrees C
CONTROLLED VARIABLE: Volume of hydrogen peroxide, weight of potatoes, amount of washing detergent used and time

Write a method that you could use to undertake your investigation. You can use dot points.

1. Take a potato and cut it up into small identical shapes and weigh each potato so they are all the same
2. Fill each test tube with 3 pieces of potato each plus 10mL of water, then place test tubes in respective water baths of different temperatures, "ice", "25 degrees Celsius", "37 degrees Celsius", "50 degrees Celsius" for 5 minutes each.
3. Empty out the water from each test tube.
4. Then fill each test tube with 20mL of hydrogen peroxide and 4 drops of washing detergent
5. Put each test tube back into the water bath
6. After ten minutes measure the rate of reaction by the height of oxygen bubbles

pikachu975

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Re: VCE Biology Question Thread
« Reply #9141 on: April 30, 2017, 02:40:37 pm »
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Write a method that you could use to undertake your investigation. You can use dot points.

1. Take a potato and cut it up into small identical shapes and weigh each potato so they are all the same
2. Fill each test tube with 3 pieces of potato each plus 10mL of water, then place test tubes in respective water baths of different temperatures, "ice", "25 degrees Celsius", "37 degrees Celsius", "50 degrees Celsius" for 5 minutes each.
3. Empty out the water from each test tube.
4. Then fill each test tube with 20mL of hydrogen peroxide and 4 drops of washing detergent
5. Put each test tube back into the water bath
6. After ten minutes measure the rate of reaction by the height of oxygen bubbles

For step 1, be specific. How big are the potato sizes? "Small" is relative and could be 15 cm each for someone.

Step 6 could be worded better - Measure the height of the oxygen bubbles with a ruler. Also I'm not sure if this is the same, but we did a very similar experiment but for substrate concentration and we had to measure the height of the substance in the test tube FIRST and then minus that from the final height. Might be different for you though.

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vox nihili

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Re: VCE Biology Question Thread
« Reply #9142 on: April 30, 2017, 02:47:01 pm »
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Hey can someone please look at my prac and give me suggestions/feedback on what i need to change etc? thanks in advance  :)
Write an AIM for your investigation.

To investigate the effect changes in temperature has on the catalyse enzyme function.

Write an appropriate hypothesis for your experiment.

If the reaction rate is determined by the temperature then the increase in temperature between a range of 25 degrees C to 50 degrees C will speed up the rate of reaction in the catalyse enzyme and will be displayed by the height of oxygen bubbles formed.


Indentify the appropriate variables that you will be considering during your experiment.


]DEPENDENT VARIABLE: Height of oxygen bubbles formed
INDEPENDENT VARIABLE: Changes in temperature, ice, 25 degrees C, 37 degrees C, 50 degrees C
CONTROLLED VARIABLE: Volume of hydrogen peroxide, weight of potatoes, amount of washing detergent used and time

Write a method that you could use to undertake your investigation. You can use dot points.

1. Take a potato and cut it up into small identical shapes and weigh each potato so they are all the same
2. Fill each test tube with 3 pieces of potato each plus 10mL of water, then place test tubes in respective water baths of different temperatures, "ice", "25 degrees Celsius", "37 degrees Celsius", "50 degrees Celsius" for 5 minutes each.
3. Empty out the water from each test tube.
4. Then fill each test tube with 20mL of hydrogen peroxide and 4 drops of washing detergent
5. Put each test tube back into the water bath
6. After ten minutes measure the rate of reaction by the height of oxygen bubbles

Good on you for chucking this up here. The experiment part of the course is new and tricky!

I'm a little bit concerned about your hypothesis. Is this actually what you expect? If you've done this experiment already, is this what happened? I'd be very surprised if it were...
In this case, it's reasonable for your teacher to mark you down for not accurately guessing what would happen in this experiment.
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pmmenotes

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Re: VCE Biology Question Thread
« Reply #9143 on: April 30, 2017, 07:59:01 pm »
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For step 1, be specific. How big are the potato sizes? "Small" is relative and could be 15 cm each for someone.

Step 6 could be worded better - Measure the height of the oxygen bubbles with a ruler. Also I'm not sure if this is the same, but we did a very similar experiment but for substrate concentration and we had to measure the height of the substance in the test tube FIRST and then minus that from the final height. Might be different for you though.

Thank you! Yeah I'll word all that better. Also this prac we had to make it up so me and my partners just came up with it and didnt think to do that step wish we did though!

zxcvbnm18

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Re: VCE Biology Question Thread
« Reply #9144 on: May 02, 2017, 09:18:06 pm »
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Are all plant hormones hydrophilic?

Quantum44

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Re: VCE Biology Question Thread
« Reply #9145 on: May 02, 2017, 09:48:39 pm »
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Are all plant hormones hydrophilic?

Well plant hormones barely come up as they have been very much de-emphasised in the newer study designs (thank god) so I doubt you would need to know this, but I think it varies. I know auxin is hydrophilic, but since ethylene is nonpolar, I believe it would be hydrophobic. As for gibberellins, cytokinins and abscisic acid I'm not sure.
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zxcvbnm18

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Re: VCE Biology Question Thread
« Reply #9146 on: May 02, 2017, 09:56:33 pm »
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Well plant hormones barely come up as they have been very much de-emphasised in the newer study designs (thank god) so I doubt you would need to know this, but I think it varies. I know auxin is hydrophilic, but since ethylene is nonpolar, I believe it would be hydrophobic. As for gibberellins, cytokinins and abscisic acid I'm not sure.

Thank you for the quick reply

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Re: VCE Biology Question Thread
« Reply #9147 on: May 05, 2017, 07:50:05 pm »
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I have an upcoming SAC on the plant hormone Auxin, is there anything essential i might miss on it?

Quantum44

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Re: VCE Biology Question Thread
« Reply #9148 on: May 05, 2017, 08:33:48 pm »
+1
I have an upcoming SAC on the plant hormone Auxin, is there anything essential i might miss on it?

Well there isn't a lot to know or say about auxin. General knowledge of the cellular responses prompted by auxin is essential along with it's role in apical dominance. It's also useful to know about Indole Acetic Acid (IAA) as a common example of an auxin, as well as the areas on plants which produce auxin and how it travels through the plant. Of course the most important part of auxin is it's role in tropisms, more specifically phototropism and geotropism.
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Re: VCE Biology Question Thread
« Reply #9149 on: May 06, 2017, 10:11:23 am »
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Hey can someone please look at my prac and give me suggestions/feedback on what i need to change etc? thanks in advance  :)
Write an AIM for your investigation.

To investigate the effect changes in temperature has on the catalyse enzyme function.

Write an appropriate hypothesis for your experiment.

If the reaction rate is determined by the temperature then the increase in temperature between a range of 25 degrees C to 50 degrees C will speed up the rate of reaction in the catalyse enzyme and will be displayed by the height of oxygen bubbles formed.


Indentify the appropriate variables that you will be considering during your experiment.


]DEPENDENT VARIABLE: Height of oxygen bubbles formed
INDEPENDENT VARIABLE: Changes in temperature, ice, 25 degrees C, 37 degrees C, 50 degrees C
CONTROLLED VARIABLE: Volume of hydrogen peroxide, weight of potatoes, amount of washing detergent used and time

Write a method that you could use to undertake your investigation. You can use dot points.

1. Take a potato and cut it up into small identical shapes and weigh each potato so they are all the same
2. Fill each test tube with 3 pieces of potato each plus 10mL of water, then place test tubes in respective water baths of different temperatures, "ice", "25 degrees Celsius", "37 degrees Celsius", "50 degrees Celsius" for 5 minutes each.
3. Empty out the water from each test tube.
4. Then fill each test tube with 20mL of hydrogen peroxide and 4 drops of washing detergent
5. Put each test tube back into the water bath
6. After ten minutes measure the rate of reaction by the height of oxygen bubbles

Just with your hypothesis there are four questions you could ask yourself as a loose criteria to check if you've done it right:
- Is your hypothesis testable?
- Is it predictive of an effect?
- Is it falsifiable? i.e. can it be proven wrong?
- Is it specific?
Sometimes you can address everything you need in one sentence; other times you might need a little more.