Discovering Design with Biology (Textbook)

Grades 9 - 12

Discovering Design with Biology from Berean Builders is a comprehensive laboratory-based high school biology course, ideal for your college-bound student. With 180 hours of instruction, 16 units, and 40 hands-on experiments, covering household, dissection, and microscope labs, this is a thorough introduction to how living organisms are designed and classified, how they interact with one another, and how they interact with their physical environment.

Throughout the course, your student will see that life is the result of design and that organisms have been given the ability to adapt to their surroundings, as well as learn to identify the problems associated with the modern evolutionary synthesis. "Comprehension Check" questions and experiments are provided throughout each chapter and important scientific terms and vocabulary are underlined and defined. Each chapter ends with review questions to be completed before taking the chapter test. “Comprehension Check” answers are at the end of each chapter. Answers to review questions, along with tests and test answers are in the companion Answer Key & Tests (sold separately).

Concepts covered include the chemical processes for life, the structures of RNA and DNA, cell design, and photosynthesis, cellular respiration, and cellular reproduction processes. After a thorough survey of the different kinds of organisms found in nature: archaea, bacteria, protists, fungi, invertebrates, vertebrates, and plants, your student will then learn about ecosystems and the biogeochemical cycles that keep environments hospitable to life.

Labs include extracting DNA from fruit, examining the effects of temperature and pH on enzymes, exploring osmosis and diffusion, building a pedigree, culturing bacteria, growing and examining fungi, identifying the stages of mitosis, studying live bacteria that were cultured by the student, identifying budding in yeast, and analyzing the microscopic structure of plants and animals. There are also four dissection experiments: the earthworm, crayfish, fish, and frog (kits sold separately)

596 pages, hardcover.