Which part of the living system did you change?
Labs / Biology
Genetics
Give each parent two alleles for flower color — dominant B (green) or recessive b (pale). The Punnett square fills in every possible offspring, then press Breed to grow a real garden sampled from those odds. Watch the genotype and phenotype ratios settle toward the classic Mendelian numbers.
Genetics
Give each parent two alleles for flower color — dominant B (green) or recessive b (pale). The Punnett square fills in every possible offspring, then press Breed to grow a real garden sampled from those odds. Watch the genotype and phenotype ratios settle toward the classic Mendelian numbers.
Why it matters
Why explore this?
Living systems are connected and constantly changing. This model makes one biological process visible so you can test how its parts affect one another.
Explore
Try the model
Parent 1Parent 2
genotype 1 : 2 : 1phenotype 3 : 1sample 0 : 0
Investigate
Questions to test
Predict first, try it in the model, then use what you observe to answer.
What to try
- Cross two heterozygotes (Bb × Bb). Why do you get three green plants for every pale one, even though the parents look identical?
- Cross BB × bb. All the offspring look green — so where did the recessive b allele go, and is it really gone?
- Breed only 8 offspring, then 48. Which sample lands closer to the perfect 3:1 ratio, and why does size matter?
- Can you pick parents that produce zero pale flowers? What about a cross where exactly half come out pale?
- The genotype ratio reads 1:2:1 but the phenotype ratio reads 3:1. How can two different genotypes look exactly the same?
Explain
Make sense of what happened
Explain the process as a chain: a change happens, the system responds, and that response affects what happens next. Use an observation from the model as evidence.
Check
Before you leave
How did the system respond?
How would you explain that response?
If you can answer all three using evidence from the model, you understand the main idea. If not, return to Explore and change one setting at a time.