Natural Selection and Evolution

Lab Brief #5

🎯 Your mission

Run the experiment. Find out what really happens.

⚡ The twist

What the body does in one minute is wilder than any cartoon.

What you'll learn

Natural selection is the process in which organisms with helpful traits survive and reproduce more successfully than those without them. Over many generations this can lead to evolution, such as when moths with darker wings became common in soot-covered forests.

Key words

trait
A feature of a living thing, like eye color or height.
natural selection
How living things best suited to their home survive and have young.
evolution
The slow change in living things over many generations.

Make a hypothesis first

Guess: how does the body solve this problem?

Say your guess out loud — then find out if you were right.

Get ready

🧰 What you need

paper towels

⚠️ Safety first

Have an adult check your set-up before you start, and tidy everything away afterwards.

Step 1 of 4 · Read

Look at the vocabulary words and write a definition for each in your own words.

Step 2 of 4 · Do

Model natural selection: scatter colored paper scraps on grass. Time how long it takes a partner to pick up each color. Which color survived longest? Why?

Step 3 of 4 · Observe

Look for patterns in your observations.

Step 4 of 4 · Record

Make a graph or chart showing your results.

Question 1 of 3

What do all living things have in common?

How sure are you?😐 maybe

Question 2 of 3

Which organism is a producer in a food chain?

How sure are you?😐 maybe

Question 3 of 3

What organism produces food at the base of most food chains?

How sure are you?😐 maybe

Mind = blown

🦠 You have more bacterial cells in your body than human cells.

Nice work!

You got 0 of 3 right.

Next: Classifying Life into Kingdoms All lessons

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✨ More to explore

🌍 Where you see this in real life: Your own body is doing this thousands of times every second.

🏆 Stretch challenge (try it this week): Find one thing about your body that's different from a friend's. Wonder why.

👨‍👩‍👧 For the dinner table: “Tell me something you noticed about your own body today.”

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