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Important - Please read this before you turn the page.

•  You must sign your name on this page to receive the group grade.
•  You may refer to your notes, course reader, handouts, textbook, or graded homework assignments. Reference books in the course library may be consulted briefly and returned.
•  In CHEM-342, hemoglobin is a vehicle for learning how to learn by asking questions and pursuing answers to those questions. Undoubtedly you have learned a lot about hemoglobin in the process but you also should be developing habits of mind that will enable you to solve problems in other courses and throughout your life. This part of the final examination provides an opportunity for you and the other members of your group to display problem-solving skills as a team. It is extremely unlikely that anyone in your group or in the class has encountered the information on the following page. Your answers should display your collective:
                -breadth of knowledge (not limited to hemoglobin or biochemistry)
                -ability to analyze, make connections, and ask probing questions
                -sense of logic and organization
                -skill at generating models (testable hypotheses)
•     This examination should be approached in phases
            Phase 1 - Individual work for 10 to 15 minutes. Read the questions carefully and write
                            down all of your learning issues and thoughts.
            Phase 2 - Starting about 9 PM, as a group, generate as long a list of learning issues as you
                           can. Organize your learning issues into five major categories and arrange them to
                           display a probing series of connected questions.
            Phase 3 - Generate a hypothesis provoked by the data and built around one of your learning
                           issue categories. Make a prediction about the results of a test of your hypothesis.
•     This examination will be evaluated on the richness of learning issues, the depth of analysis, the presentation of learning issues, and the quality of hypotheses and tests.

The atomic mass of iron is the weighted average of the masses of its isotopes of which the four common non-radioactive ones are listed below from the 77th Edition of the CRC Handbook of Chemistry and Physics.
 

Mass spectrometry can measure the relative abundance of each isotope in various samples with great accuracy and precision. Thus, differences in isotope abundance among samples of as little as 0.01% can be detected. The figure below was published about two months ago in Science [1]. In a single graph it depicts the relative abundance of the three most common iron isotopes in blood samples taken from 15 men and 29 women. For example, a delta ⁵⁷Fe (‰) value of -3 on the y-axis means that there is a 3 part per thousand (0.3%) deficit of ⁵⁷Fe in an iron sample relative to ⁵⁴Fe. A reference standard with the natural abundances listed above would be a point at the origin in the upper right hand corner.
 

56Fe (‰)  ={ [(56Fe/54Fe)sample/(56Fe/54Fe)std] – 1} x 1000 57Fe  (‰) ={ [(57Fe/54Fe)sample/(57Fe/54Fe)std] – 1} x 1000 1. (15 points) After generating a significant list of group learning issues on a separate sheet, organize the list into five major categories and present them on the next page in a coherent way that displays logic and depth.  2. (10 points) Generate a testable hypothesis built around one of your learning issues and, based on your knowledge and intuition, make a prediction of the outcome.

[1] Thomas Walczyk and Friedhelm von Blanckenburg, “Natural Iron Isotope Variations in Human Blood,” Science 295, 2065-2066 (2002)

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Learning Issue Category 5 ___________________________________
 

Prediction of the results of a test of your hypothesis.