vosh

So, I set up my own little forum. Someone logged in and asked me a question. I told them they could find the answer on wikipedia. I then did a dismissive about face and walked off with some friends to a cafe where we had a nasally snort at the expense of "new money". My reply was followed by a flame, saying a guy who would bother to have a forum, or be on a forum for the purpose of answering questions, only to say, "go to wiki" is a major league, galactic class d--shmaster of Frank Burns proportions. Can you believe that!?

I am currently struggling to understand this. Yeah... Anyone who wants to expand on it, I would be much obliged. Merged post follows: Consecutive posts merged Looking around, I found one explanation that made sense to me. Frequency is associated with the energy of individual photons, and amplitude is associated with the number of photons per unit area. I guess that follows. A brighter light is more light... Huh, I hate how after wrestling with something it seems like it should have been obvious in the beginning. I 'toopid.

And you can't possibly know how another person should learn something, what's in their head, etc. etc. That's the beauty of a student led session. The student knows better than anyone what they need.

Yes. Some of that I got from the exchange above, some from other sources, websites, textbooks... I can't express my gratitude enough here for your efforts. However, and this is in no way a rebuke of your effort here, I feel I should mention that I have not had anything but success with the question and answer session in this thread. Indeed, it has taken me exactly where I wanted to be with my questions. I wanted to make that clear in case there was an impression that it all left me none the less lost and unclear about everything in spite of my queries. I'm afraid that following one question with another might have given the impression that I wasn't having any luck, so I thought I would point out that this isn't the case. I can hardly believe what I've managed to put together about this subject just by asking. I believe this is the result of asking my own questions, and I believe this has taken me to an over all understanding much faster than having someone decide for me what questions and answers I should be studying. Hope that made sense. If not, well, communication is an ongoing thing, isn't it. Anyway, thanks again.

Read any good text books? Merged post follows: Consecutive posts mergedProteins are put together by enzymes following the template laid out by mRNA and DNA... but DNA wasn't put together by anything; it was already there. I guess that means that the answer to the question, where did the DNA come from, is that it evolved billions of years ago.

I found an article at howstuffworks that explained that amino acids are put together by 3 nucleotides. I didn't quite get that it's always three, that three pieces of something get aligned together to make an amino acid. Not sure if I know what those somethings are or not...

Hmmm. Yes. I'm reading that, now... trying to find how these bases make up an acid... Much obliged.

Wow. That's good to have straightened out. Much obliged. 5 total, huh. Never knew that. Oh... is that the uracil!? So, nucleotides are floating around in the nucleus, and when enzymes (complicated story there, too, I know) unzip a part of the double helix (dhelix), those nucleotides line up to make an RNA polymer. And amino acids are floating about in the cytoplasm available to be strung together. You know what drives me nuts? Ok, I tell ya. The pendant part of the dna polymer is always called a base. Apparently, this is not meant to mean that it has a low pH. I can't find any explanation for why it's called a base. It's odd; I can't recall having seen any reference to amino acids being composed of just three molecules. Hmmmm. TFYT

I haven't quite worked out what an amino acid is, yet. I mean, there are molecules that make the protein polymers (also called polypeptides?) and then there are the molecules that make the dna... are they both "amino acids"? note: I don't need to know the deep down chemistry - I know that it's called amino acid because it has a part that is called an amine and it has an H atom that makes it an acid... and that's enough for now, regarding the chemistry. Unless, of course, someone has an accessible explanation for the chemistry. And, does this mean that an amino acid is that which is made of 3 molecules? Thanks for your patience. I'm trying to form a picture here.

So, dna is a molecule, a long chain molecule, also known as a macromolecule, because it's large, and also known as a polymer. Polymers are made of many molecules called monomers that are linked together to make the long chain molecule. The monomers of the dna polymer (macromolecule, long chain molecule) are molecules called nucleotides. I don't know why they're called that except that nucleo- refers to be found in the nucleus. These "nucleotides" are made out of groups of atoms, one being a phosphate group, meaning that it's made out of the phosphate polyatomic ion and something else, but I don't know what, a pentose sugar, and I don't know what a pentose sugar is, and a base. I think it's called a base because it is "basic" in solution, meaning that in an aqueous soln. it has a pH higher than 7. Monomer type molecules are configured such that the part of them that bonds to each other to form a chain ends up forming a backbone, with another part of the monomer hanging off the backbone, sometimes referred to as a pendant, although that term doesn't turn up much in discussions about genetics. This is like a ladder that has runs but only one frame instead of two. So, if you saw a ladder in half vertically down the middle, you'd have two representations of a polymer. The half length rungs would represent the so called bases of the dna polymer. These bases join up with the bases on another half ladder dna polymer. Now twist them around to make a double helix and one big dna molecule. In the dna chain molecule, there are 4 different kinds of nucleotides, the so called letters that spell out the information dna contains. What I can't figure out is what a codon is. TFYT.

I'm not advocating imposing it on everyone today. I'm just saying that there are more people every year who do not send their kids to school. So, one day, there will be this paradigm shift away from mass compulsory schools (there could be schools, but not as we have them). I can say this because I know that what is happening today is not confined to the rich and the phds. I know there are plenty who can't, or don't think they can, and that's fine. Change doesn't, shouldn't, happen by forcing people to do anything, but by people choosing to do things differently. And I know that it will happen because an education is not something that someone has to do to you, and I know that therefore schools are just day care centers.

Hello. Ack, I cannot get the hang of replying to replies... Well, we would use our intelligence to know what will be best in the long run - it's still based on what hurts and what doesn't. Agreed. I should have said that folks may think that the ability to hunt is a complex unlearned behavior, so I was saying that it isnt. Do lions do anything that is complex unlearned behavior? See, I think of instincts as bees constructing a hive, doing a dance to communicate where the flowers are, or birds building a nest, or spiders making a web... very particular, intricate sets of skills, like a human building a shed, not just nerves and muscles reacting to a stimulus... Instincts seem to be needed more so the lower on the food chain you go, and less so the larger the brain. I've never heard of the "chase, kill" trigger in dogs and cats, for example, referred to anything other than a reflex action. Just thinkin' aloud, here. I would expect them to do the breast stroke if they inherited that instinct. Is holding the breath under water a complex unlearned behavior? I dunno... Hope this post comes out readable.

My take on this is in 3 parts. 1. What do you expect will happen if you make kids spend the time between age 5 and age 18 being told what to think and when to think it, which is what education since 1900 amounts to? 2. IQ scores are reported to be higher; but I suspect this is due to everyone in the 20th century being socialized to take tests. 3. I'll bet people have not changed since ancient Babylon... except that in recent times you don't have to be fit to survive, and smart people have far fewer kids than dumb people.

Change is already happening because people have the liberty to do things differently without first getting permission from a King. Since the late 80s, the home schooling population has increased every year. They are now raising their own kids. College admissions officers actually seek them out. There are Sudbury Model schools. How can all this be if an education is something someone has to do to you? Mass compulsory schooling rests entirely on a false assumption about how people work, and it is slowly and surely on its way out. And good riddance to the most radical social experiment of the 20th century next to the Russian revolution.

We feel pain and pleasure. Right and wrong is based on that. An instinct is a complex unlearned behavior. Spiders building a web is instinctive. It's unlearned and it's complex. It would be like an infant one day making a model of a sky scraper with Popsicle sticks. Not even all animals have instincts. Lions learn how to hunt from their mother. The people who put together the dictionary have an unfortunate, and in my view, dumb, practice of modifying a word based on how most people have been using it, no matter how incorrectly. For any little thing that wasn't strictly conscious, people say, "oh, it was instinctive". No. No, it was not instinctive. Instinctive is building a web, not answering the phone just as your true love was calling. But the people who put together the dictionary these days have no problem with adding, "a feelin' ya kinda have" to the list. I know that babies reflexively hold their breath under water. I don't know about "swimming". Has an infant ever done the breast stroke?

I see. "Chromosome" refers to the structure we can see under a light microscope of scrunched up dna, either as a single or pair of sister chromatids; is that a good way to say it? Perhaps this is because these are the structures that could be seen via dyes. I'll start from here... I can hear someone saying, "but that website defines a chromosome as a single molecule of DNA...". The websites and the books out there don't seem to have a good starting point. It's good to be able to talk to a phd; someone actually working in the field. Very much obliged. Merged post follows: Consecutive posts merged Nooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!

You mean that before that phase (which I'll have to look up, never heard of S phase, seems like everywhere I look there is either a new thing, or the same thing is referred to by a different term...), a single dna molucule, which coiled up is a chromosome, is by itself, but after the S phase it gets joined to another via a centromere? Many thanks. Merged post follows: Consecutive posts merged Well, I googled it, and apparently the term "chromatid" is used to refer to duplicated chromosomes that are joined by a centromere (forming that x shape). So, a dna molecule coiled up is a chromosome (and I think it was called that before it was known to be dna, but someone can sharply correct me on that), when the chromosome duplicates, the two copies are referred to as chromatids, or sister chromatids. When the two are separated, they are then called daughter chromosomes. They're always "dna" and "chromosomes", but there are these different terms for referring to those different situations... I guess is one way to look at it. So, in answer to the question (again - I'm learning by thinking out loud about this), a chromosome is one dna molecule coiled up (so we can see it). When it replicates, it's two chromsomes, two dna molecules, but we call them chromatids, and when they're pulled apart, they're referred to as daughter chromosomes. Hang on... that means that somewhere in there, between replication and division, there are 92 chromosomes. The heck? Thank you for your time.

Hello. First time here. This is interesting because I just started studying this and was just learning about this particular thing. My understanding is that a single (1.8 meter long?) dna molecule is crumpled up to make one chromosome. This would mean that each human nucleus has 46 dna molecules in all. What I'm confused about at the moment is, does this mean that before duplication, the nucleus only has 23 chromosomes? I haven't gotten that much straightened out yet, still reading...