High School (11–12) Biology

A bare rock becomes a forest, a carbon atom goes round the world and comes back, and a phosphorus atom takes millions of years to do the same. You follow ecological succession stage by stage. You build box models of the carbon and phosphorus cycles in Python and count the services that ecosystems give us. Then you work out full energy budgets with the efficiencies that A-Level and IB use. It goes beyond the textbook, to the level of A-Level Biology, IB Higher Level and the Olympiad. Twelve harder problems and a full timed mock exam.

Before a student cuts any DNA, a plan is made on paper. You choose the enzymes from a restriction map, so that the gene goes into the vector in the right direction. You read gels and colony plates, with the controls that tell you whether to trust them. You design primers, and you learn what an expression vector must hold. It goes beyond the textbook, to the level of A-Level Biology, IB Higher Level and the Olympiad.

Beyond the textbook: how a labelled-nitrogen experiment is designed and what each model of replication predicts. How to reason about every mutant of the lac operon, how a change of one base changes a codon, and how to read a gel and count copies in PCR. Twelve harder problems and a full timed paper, at the level of A-Level Biology, IB Higher Level and the Olympiad.

Some crosses give ratios that Mendel's two laws do not predict at first sight, and some data need a test before you trust a ratio. You work out gene interaction, such as epistasis and complementary genes, by listing every cross in Python. You test ratios with chi-square, use the Hardy-Weinberg tool to find carriers, and build gene maps from three-point crosses. It goes beyond the textbook, to the level of A-Level Biology, IB Higher Level and the Olympiad.

Beyond the textbook: reading spirometer graphs of healthy and diseased lungs, working out ventilation and dead space, calculating partial pressures and the oxygen carried by blood, and reasoning about every shift of the dissociation curve. Twelve harder problems and a full timed mock exam.

Beyond the textbook: a full account of the ATP, NADPH, carbon and photons that photosynthesis spends, a point-by-point comparison of the C3 and C4 pathways, and the reading of limiting-factor graphs and classic experiments. Twelve harder problems and a full timed mock exam.