Biology Chapter 1

Use the following study to answer the following question(s): A current trend among professional baseball players is to wear braided titanium necklaces. The titanium reportedly regulates the flow of energy through the body. The player wearing the necklace then improves strength, tires less, and recovers more quickly. Which of the following would be the strongest evidence for or against the necklace's effectiveness?

A bar graph comparing batting averages of the players who wear the official titanium necklace and those who were unknowingly wearing a fake titanium necklace

What does the term theory mean to a scientist?

A broad hypothesis that has been supported by a large number of experiments

What is the smallest unit of life?

A cell

Use the following graph to answer the following question. What type of graph is this?

A line graph

If you give 100 sick people tablets similar to Echinacea but with no herb, what kind of control would this be?

A negative control

What is the difference between a primary and a secondary source?

A primary source is the original material published by the scientists, whereas a secondary source is a description of the original material.

What is misleading about commercials that show "scientific proof" that laundry detergent X is better than another leading brand?

All of the above are aspects that are misleading.

Use the following table to answer the following question. Table 1: Cookie parameters with varying fat levels. Based on the table above, which of the following statements is not correct?

Cookies with the most fat were the cookies that were not only the thickest but also the largest in diameter.

Which of the following is the correct organizational hierarchy, from largest to smallest, in the hierarchical order of life? (Some levels have been omitted, so you are looking for the correct order.)

Ecosystem, Community, Population, Organ, Tissue, Cell, Molecule, Atom

What is the unifying or "core" theme of biology?

Evolution

Which of the following statements cannot be tested by science?

It is wrong that male lions kill baby lions when taking over a new pride.

A recent commercial advertised for a wristband that claimed to restore health and balance by taking advantage of natural frequencies of your biofield. It supports its claim by showing several people first struggling to balance without the wristband and then balancing fine with the wristband. Why should you be skeptical of the claims made in this ad?

It was not a controlled experiment.

Table 1: Cookie parameters with varying fat levels. Based on the table above, which of the following statements is correct?

No information is provided on the table regarding the effects of sugar on cookies, so only conclusions regarding the effects of fat can be drawn.

What should one do if the results of the experiment consistently do not support the original hypothesis?

Reject the original hypothesis and formulate a new hypothesis.

Skin is sometimes referred to as the largest organ of the body. Why is skin considered to be an organ and not a tissue or some other structure?

Skin consists of multiple tissue types that cooperate to perform a specific task.

Certain parasites, such as intestinal tapeworms, cannot survive outside of the host. Why are they still considered alive?

Survival outside of a host is not a requirement for life.

Many medical studies include a control group in which patients receive a medically ineffective treatment that resembles the treatment tested. What do we call the ineffective treatment?

The placebo

Which of the following represents a blind study?

The test group does not know whether they are receiving a placebo or the actual treatment, but the researchers do.

is a rough recipe for answering questions, but the steps need not be performed in the same order as outlined

This study was evaluated by qualified and impartial experts before being published.

Use the following graph to answer the following question. The cookies with the least amount of fat had more cells around 500 μm in size than did the cookies with the most amount of fat.

True

Use the following study to answer the following question(s): A researcher applies varying amounts of fertilizer (0, 2, 4, 8, 10 units) to 50 potted tomato plants. All other variables that may affect the outcome (watering, temperature, sunlight, plant size, etc.) are kept the same from pot to pot. At the end of the growing season, the tomatoes grown on each plant are weighed to determine which fertilizer level produces the largest tomato yield.Is the study presented above a controlled experiment?

Yes, because only the amount of fertilizer was changed, everything else was kept the same.

Use the following study to answer the following question(s): A researcher applies varying amounts of fertilizer (0, 2, 4, 8, 10 units) to 50 potted tomato plants. All other variables that may affect the outcome (watering, temperature, sunlight, plant size, etc.) are kept the same from pot to pot. At the end of the growing season, the tomatoes grown on each plant are weighed to determine which fertilizer level produces the largest tomato yield. Which variable is the dependent variable?

Yield

A population consists of ________.

a group of interacting individuals of one species

Use the following graph to answer the following question. Regardless of the amount of fat contained in cookies, the most common cell size in a cookie was ________.

between 280 and 500 μm

Gathering information just to add to the knowledge base, such as measuring the beak length of various bird species, is known as ________.

discovery science

A college campus-including the students, birds, trees, sidewalks, and air-makes up one complete ________.

ecosystem

Use the following information to answer the following question(s): You wake up one morning feeling slightly under the weather. A close family member enthusiastically suggests that you take some Echinacea, an herb commonly used as a cold remedy. You then decide to design an experiment to test Echinacea and see if this claim is true. You think, "If taken at the beginning of a cold, Echinacea will reduce cold symptoms." Your statement, "If taken at the beginning of a cold, Echinacea will reduce cold symptoms," is called a(n) ________.

hypothesis

The scientific method ________.

is a rough recipe for answering questions, but the steps need not be performed in the same order as outlined

"There are 628 squirrels living on campus." I have just described the ________.

population

A controlled experiment is one in which ________.

there are at least two groups, one of which does not receive the experimental treatment