Freddie Goes Experimental

While Gregor Mendel is all great, i find myself greater sometimes. That is why Ive decided to test some things out for myself, with the most advanced technology only found in the depths of my room.

The Penny.

The most faithful form of experimental probability, with a 50% chance of landing heads and 50% chance of landing tails. Also a quick, easy way to test if outcomes of traits really are accurate if one only uses Punnett squares. 

I'm going to think of my genetic testing as the fur color of squirrels I caught nearly half an hour ago, planning to breed them for my experiment, when my mother found the cage and asked, very loudly, for me to let them go. The squirrels had a brown fur color and a gray fur color, brown being the dominant factor.

Because the pennies (soon to be squirrel parents) have two sides, and there is an equal chance of getting either, the parents must have a heterozygous fur color, which would be the phenotype brown.

This Punnett square will appear like this: 

     F     f

F  FF   Ff

f   Ff    ff

This shows that 25% of the offspring will have homozygous dominant fur, which will appear as brown, 50% will be heterozygous and will appear as brown, and 25% will be homozygous recessive, or gray. 

And to specify what allele goes to what side of the penny: 

Heads: F, or dominant

Tails: f, or recessive.

Off to collect data, 

Dr. Freddie Stein