Onion Mitosis Lab

One of the labs that I've come to enjoy while we are studying the cell cycle in AP Biology is the Onion Mitosis lab. I love this version of the lab because it requires very little prep time on my part, and within a week, my students have some real data to analyze. The lab I use with my students was modified from Lee Ferguson and can be found on her website, The Biology Space, here under the cell structure and function resources. 

It's hard to see, but we usually hold the onions up in the beakers by rubber banding them around a straw that sticks lower than the ends of the onions. That way the root bases aren't pushed against the bottom of the beaker.

I really only modified the materials that I provide the students to experiment with and how the results will be presented--since my students do a mini poster presentation of their results. The modified lab document can be found here.