Book-ending Christmas break with Lorenzo's Oil

Keeping students engaged on the last day before Christmas break can be a challenge, but I don't believe in wasting time.  We just finished our unit on Mendelian Genetics, and watching Lorenzo's Oil is a great complement to what we've done in AP Biology so far.  Last year I found a study unit on the movie here. We started with the activity demonstrating what happens to nerve signals as they become demyelinated. Students start with a "brain bucket full of signals (ping pong balls) and must pass them from one student to the next until it reaches the "body" bucket. We count how many signals (ping pong balls) make it into the body bucket in 10 seconds and then start again. But the second time
we do it, two students have to sit out and the remaining students may not move any closer to each other. We repeat one more time with two more students sitting out, to get a feel for how signal transmissions changes as more of the myelin is lost from nerve cells.

Then we get out the snacks and start watching the movie.  There are questions provided in the study unit to help them keep focused and delve deeper into the science of the movie.

When we get back from break we do the competitive inhibition activity with paper clips and finish the movie.  In the competitive inhibition activity we look at how providing more unsaturated fatty acids "competes" with the saturated fatty acids to hinder the production of very long chain saturated fatty acids (VLCSFA).

As we finish the movie, it leads naturally into a discussion of medical ethics, and is a great segue into our molecular genetics unit.