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Name ______Per ______Bag of Bones Background: Read handout on Osteoporosis and astronauts.

Pre-Lab Questions: 1. Why is important to have strong health bones? ______

2. What will happen if your bones become weak? ______Hypothesis Prompt: • What do you think will happen to a bone (in this case, represented by your baggie and cereal) if force is suddenly applied to it?

______

• Will the results change if the bone is progressively weakened? ______Procedures: A. To build a “bone” you will use pieces of cereal to represent individual bone cells. Fill the bag with 200 pieces of cereal so that the bag and record this on your data table as Normal Bone Density. Close the bag, and make sure it is closed tightly!

B. Hold text book out at “arms-length” and drop it on the baggie of cereal.

C. Count how many bone cells (cereal pieces) have not been damaged. Record this number on your data table.

D. Count out correct number of cereal pieces to represent your next bone density and put in baggie, remove as much air as possible for baggie and seal tightly.

E. Repeat Procedures B, C & D until you have finished all five trials.

Data Normal Bone Density = 100% = ______pieces of cereal (original amount in baggie)

Density of Bone 2 = 90% of original = ______pieces of cereal

Density of Bone 3 = 80% of original = ______pieces of cereal

Density of Bone 4 = 65% of original = ______pieces of cereal

Density of Bone 5 = 50% of original = ______pieces of cereal

Before the Experiment After the Experiment Amount of Bone Density Amount of Not % of Bone % of Bone Loss (# of cereal pieces in Crushed Cereal Unaffected Damaged bag) 0% loss 10% loss 20% loss 35% loss 50% loss

Analyzing the Results

1. How does the % of damaged bone for a healthy normal bone compare to the % of damaged bone for a bone with 50% bone density? ______

2. What happened to the remaining bone cells (cereal) as the amount in the baggie decreased in each trial? ______

3. Explain how the results from this lab support your hypothesis or do not support your hypothesis. ______

4. What do you think astronauts could do to attempt to prevent bone loss? ______