Midterm Exam — Instructions

Overview

This is the scored midterm for Introduction to Biology. It checks the first half of the course, Weeks 1 to 7, and the questions those weeks asked. What makes something alive, and how do biologists decide what is true? Why does life depend on water, and how does a molecule's shape decide its job? Why is the cell the unit of life, and why must it stay small? How does a cell pay for its work, and in what order does sugar become ATP and light become sugar?

The midterm has 25 questions, and every question counts the same. Most of them (18) ask you to select exactly one option. Four ask you to judge a true/false statement, and three ask you to select every applicable option. Any data table or labeled figure a question needs is described in words inside the question itself.

Every question practices a skill you have already used in the weekly quizzes, tutorials, and Biology Lab & Inquiry activities. Nothing on the midterm comes from outside Weeks 1 to 7.

Coverage and scope

The midterm covers Weeks 1 to 7 and the course's first four objectives. Here is what the drawn form holds, objective by objective, with the weeks its questions come from:

• The practice of science (Objective 1, 4 questions): 3 from Week 1 and 1 from Week 7. Expect what counts as a living thing, judged against the whole checklist, and why passing one or two of its boxes is not enough. Expect the average of repeated trials in an illustrative experiment, and the parts of a fair test with a control, the control group among them.
• The chemistry of life and its macromolecules (Objective 2, 7 questions): 4 from Week 2, 1 from Week 3, and 2 from Week 5. Expect the three kinds of bonds, water's polarity, cohesion and adhesion working together, and what a buffer can and cannot do. Expect reading an iodine starch test, and Week 5's view of an enzyme as a protein whose shape is its job, so heat and pH can disturb it.
• The cell (Objective 3, 5 questions): 4 from Week 4 and 1 from Week 6. Expect organelles read for their jobs, the structures a plant cell has, tonicity read from the cell's side, and passive versus active transport. Expect one question on where in the mitochondrion a stage of respiration runs.
• Energy, enzymes, respiration, and photosynthesis (Objective 4, 9 questions): 3 each from Weeks 5, 6, and 7. Expect catabolic versus anabolic reactions, ATP versus ADP, and what an enzyme does and does not change. Expect cellular respiration versus breathing, a short difference read from an illustrative data table, and glycolysis running without oxygen. Expect the Calvin cycle's need for the light reactions, the source of the oxygen a plant releases, and plants doing both processes.

By week, the 25 questions come out like this:

Energy carries the most questions, 9 of the 25, so give Weeks 5 to 7 the most review time. Chemistry and the macromolecules come next with 7, then the cell with 5, and the practice of science with 4. Week 3 has only one question of its own, but its proteins return inside the Week 5 enzyme questions. The three questions that ask for every applicable statement come from Weeks 2, 4, and 7, and the four true/false statements come from Weeks 2, 5, 6, and 7. Most questions sit at a medium level of difficulty.

Week 8's order-and-location habit is not scored on its own. It still pays off, because it runs on the Week 4, 6, and 7 processes the midterm does check.

These notes map the skills the midterm checks. The questions themselves are drawn from the course's question bank and are not listed here.

Instructions

• Attempts: one. The midterm is a single scored attempt.
• Time limit: there is no time limit. Take the time you need, as long as you submit before the exam closes.
• Window: the midterm opens in the Week 8 module and closes at the due time your instructor sets. Start early enough to finish comfortably inside that window.
• Navigation: the questions appear one at a time, and once you move on you cannot go back to an earlier question. Settle each one before you move to the next.
• Materials: any data a question uses is printed in the question. A few questions ask for a short step, such as averaging three trials or finding the difference between two readings, and scratch paper is enough for it. Unless your instructor announces otherwise, the midterm is closed-note.
• After you submit: Canvas shows your result. The keyed answers stay hidden so the midterm stays fair for every student.

Academic integrity

The midterm is an individual, scored assessment, and it is closed to AI. Do not use a chatbot or any other AI tool, do not get help from another person, and do not share or post the questions during or after your attempt. These rules come from the course syllabus. The midterm confirms that you personally can read a structure for its job, put a process in order, and work a quantitative question.

The honest way to prepare is open to you. The study guide, the practice exam, and the exam-prep tutorial rehearse the same skills with fresh variants, and nothing on them appears on the midterm word for word.

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