Kickstart Science

Biology

Help your students’ interest in Biology, grow! Bring Biology back to life with a Kickstart workshop that is designed especially to support and enhance the HSC biology syllabus. Every workshop is totally hands-on and features real specimens that the students can see and touch – living plants and animals, preserved museum specimens and fresh tissue for dissection.

Each module in our Kickstart program is closely aligned with the HSC syllabus, and has been enriched by cutting-edge science and expertise from the research laboratories in the School of Biological Sciences. With access to a wide range of instruments and resources from our modern teaching laboratories, Kickstart gives students a real university experience in Biology.

Modules offered

Biotechnology

• Perform first-hand investigation into the effect of temperature on the rate of amylase activity (techniques: spectrophotometry)
• Extract DNA from Arabidopsis leaf tissue then separate DNA using gel electrophoresis so it can be visualised under UV light (techniques: DNA extraction, micropipette, gel electrophoresis)

Blueprint of Life

This workshop covers evolution and the genetics of inheritance using a wide variety of museum specimens and LIVE animals. Students learn by getting hands-on experience with the materials.

Support for theory of evolution:

• giant models of embryos: human, pig, chicken, fish
• real cast of fossilised Archaeopteryx
• a wide variety of animal skeletons that demonstrate homologous structures (eg: pentadactyl limb) and a LIVE python with vestigial limbs

Genetics and Inheritance:

• Morgan’s Experiments using LIVE fruit flies – sex linkage of white eye trait
• type real human blood to learn about co-domninant phenotypes
• LIVE insects that demonstrate the effect of environment on gene expression

Communication

Using live specimens, giant models and charts, students will investigate the anatomy and function of the human ear and eye. In order to experience the functions of parts of the eye and ear, students will do a range of interactive exercises used by doctors to test the hearing and vision of patients.

Vision exercises:

• colour perception
• accommodation
• blind spot
• hyperopic/myopic

An eye dissection exercise will be carried out to gain a more complete understanding of visual communication.

Auditory exercises:

• sound shadow
• nerve/conduction deafness
• observing ear drum using otoscopes

Students get to use special interactive software that demonstrates how Cochlear Implants hear.

Animal Communication

Using dissecting microscopes and other tools students will investigate and identify the detection and communication organs in animals and relate these to the environment in which they are found. Animals covered:

• Planaria
• Insects
• Fish
• Reptiles, and
• Mammals

We use LIVE animals for this component.

Genetics – The code broken?

This module is a forensic biology exercise where students use the following ‘tools of the trade’ to determine relatedness of individuals:

• blood typing on real blood, ABO and rhesus blood groups
• DNA fingerprinting – students will use real DNA and run their very own analysis using modern equipment from molecular biology and forensic laboratories.

Extra component on linked genes:

• students use LIVE fruit flies with various mutations (eg: vestigial wings, scarlet eyes)
• see real polytene chromosomes
• examine both physical and linkage maps of Drosophila chromosomes

Contact

If there are other areas that have not been covered by the above topic areas please contact us to discuss your specific needs.

Contact: Carla Avolio, Science Communicator, School of Biological Sciences
Phone: (02) 9351 4543
Fax: (02) 9351 4771
Email: