Domain Discovery

What are you doing?

You are a field scientist exploring two very different environments on Earth — a hydrothermal vent deep in the ocean and a forest floor. Use your forceps to collect organisms from each environment and examine them under the microscope.

How to collect a specimen

  1. Select an environment from the map.
  2. Drag the organism down to the microscope slide on the lab bench.
  3. Examine the cell — look closely at what's inside.
  4. Drag the slide away from the microscope to eject it. Your observation is recorded automatically.
  5. Return to the map and try another environment.

Things to look for

  • What do the instrument gauges tell you about each environment?
  • What do you notice about the cell structure in each environment?
  • Look at your data in Tuva — what pattern do you see?

Standards

  • FL Grade 6 — SC.6.L.15.1: Analyze and describe how and why organisms are classified according to shared characteristics, with emphasis on the Linnaean system combined with the concept of Domains.

Pedagogical approach

This is a sandbox discovery sim — not a guided classification activity. Students collect organisms from environments with dramatically different conditions and observe their cellular structure. Domain vocabulary (Archaea, Bacteria, Eukarya) is intentionally absent. The classification pattern emerges from the student's own dataset in Tuva Data Tools, not from the sim.

Data schema

Each specimen collected adds one row: environment, temperature, oxygen %, pH, salinity, organism name, nucleus present (Yes/No). The pattern becomes visible when students sort or group by nucleus presence and compare it to environmental conditions.

V1 environments

  • Hydrothermal Vent: 121 °C, 0% O₂, pH 3, salinity 38 ppt — Archaea specimen, no nucleus
  • Forest Floor: 18 °C, 21% O₂, pH 6.5, salinity 0 ppt — Soil Fungus specimen, nucleus present

Discussion after data collection

  • What conditions do the nucleus-absent organisms live in?
  • What is different about how their DNA is organized?
  • Introduce domain vocabulary after students have named the pattern themselves.