You and your friend are on vacation at Yellowstone Park. The plaque in front of a sulfur hot spring reads: “This sulfur spring is 80°C, has a pH of 2, and contains large amounts of sulfur which is oxidized by Sulfolobus species of archaea.” Your friend is excited. “Boy, if those microbes are that tough they should be easy to grow in the lab. I think I’ll work with those for my summer project.” What do you think?

Question

A.  You agree, and decide to partner with your friend to work on this organism as well.
B.  A species adapted to such extreme conditions would probably not be easy to culture in the very different conditions of a lab.
C.  The sulfur spring is pretty extreme, but after a few days the individual archaea should have adapted to lab culture conditions.
D.  The sulfur spring is pretty extreme, but after a few generations the species should have adapted to the lab culture conditions.


Clarify question:
What is the key concept addressed by the question?

What type of thinking is required?


Gather Content:
What do you already know about replicating the environmental conditions of hot springs in the lab? What other information is related to the question? 


Choose Answer:
Given what you now know, what information is most likely to produce the correct answer?


Reflection on Process:
  Did your problem-solving process lead you to the correct answer? If not, where did the process break down or lead you astray? How can you revise your approach to produce a more desirable result?

Answer 1

B.  A species adapted to such extreme conditions would probably not be easy to culture in the very different conditions of a lab.


Clarify question:
What is the key concept addressed by the question?
The key concept is the environmental conditions in which the archaea species exists and if that can be replicated in the lab.

What type of thinking is required?
This is an evaluate level question, you will need to consider each of the choices and make a judgement as to which is the best response to the statement made in the question.


Gather Content:
What do you already know about replicating the environmental conditions of hot springs in the lab? What other information is related to the question? 
Water that is 80 degrees Celsius and had a pH of 2 is essentially boiling acid. This environment would instantly kill almost any living organism. In order to survive in such an environment, any organism would have to have very specialized adaptations. These conditions are very different from typical laboratory conditions.


Choose Answer:
Given what you now know, what information is most likely to produce the correct answer?
It would probably be very hard to grow these species under typical lab conditions. All adaptations have costs and the costs of these adaptations would be very high.


Reflection on Process:
  Did your problem-solving process lead you to the correct answer? If not, where did the process break down or lead you astray? How can you revise your approach to produce a more desirable result?
You need to consider all of the choices and judge between all of them. Were you able to correctly identify that the extreme environmental conditions of the hot springs cannot be replicated in the lab, but without those conditions the microorganisms cannot survive?