Name _______________________________________________ Date _______________

Coin Toss Lab

Activity: Coin Toss

Goal: To calculate the percentages of the dominant and recessive traits during a coin
toss activity.

Background Information: Genetics is the study of heredity, or passing on of traits from

one organism to its offspring. For each trait, every organism has a pair of factors, or
units of heredity, called genes. These units of heredity come from the parents of the
offspring. One of each pair comes from each parent. The dominant of the two genes
masks the recessive gene. If the pair is made of two of the same forms of the gene (for
example two dominant alleles or two recessive alleles), the offspring are homozygous
for that trait. If the pair is made of two different forms of the gene (for example one
dominant allele and one recessive allele), the offspring are heterozygous for that trait.
Gregor Mendel studied traits of pea plants. He studied two varieties of pea plants: tall
and short-stemmed plants. Mendel discovered that when he planted the seeds from
short-stemmed plants, the offspring were only short-stemmed plants, but when he
planted tall plants, short plant were sometimes produced. Mendel concluded that there
must be two factors that controlled the trait for shortness and tallness. When both
factors (genes) were present in a plant, only the tallness trait was expressed. He
reasoned that the factors (genes) that controlled tallness were dominant and masked
the shortness factor. Mendel observed, however, that under certain conditions, short
plants could be produced from tall plants.

Materials: Two coins (each coin should be marked with a capital T (T) on one side and
a lowercase T (t)) on the other side.

Procedure:

KEY: T – Tall (Dominant Trait) t – short (Recessive Trait)

1. What I Know: Write two sentences about what you already know about genetics
and probability.
 2. Obtain two marked coins. Each coin is marked with an uppercase (T) on one
side, and a lowercase (t) on the other side.
3. Toss both coins, together for a total of 100 times. Each coin represents the
alleles for a parent; therefore the cross represented by the coin tosses is Tt XTt.
Both parents are heterozygous for height.
4. Record the genotype for each coin toss (TT, Tt, tt).
5. The possible genotypes are as follows:
 TT – purebred dominant or homozygous dominant
 tt – purebred recessive or homozygous recessive
 Tt – hybrid or heterozygous
6. Record the data on your chart on your lab sheet. Complete the tally chart and
determine the total number of genetic combinations and percentages that
resulted from your tosses.
Tally Marks: I I I I = 5

7. What I Observed: This will be the data table you completed.

Tally of Dominant and Recessive Traits

TT

tt

Tt

# of TT = ______ % of TT = ______

# of tt = ______ % of tt = ______

# of Tt = ______ % of Tt = ______

# of TT + Tt = _______ % of TT + Tt = _______
(All of the tall plants) (All of the tall plants)
___
8. Questions: Answer the following questions in complete statements.
a. What did the capital T and the lowercase t represent on the coins?

b. What were the genotypes of the parents?

c. What were the phenotypes of the parents?

d. What were the percentages for each genotype?

9. What I Wonder: Pose one question that you still have about the topic of
genetics and probability.

10. Claim and Evidence Writing Prompts: Use the following prompts to help you
construct your lab conclusion, What I Learned.
 Goal: State the goal of this lesson.
The goal of this lesson is …

 Claim: What did you learn from the activity that satisfies the goal of this
lesson? This is an I Learned statement.
I learned that …

 Evidence: How can you prove from your observations that you learned
what you claim? This can be a general statement that you will explain in
detail in your explanation.

 Explanation: Use specific data from your observations to support your

claim and describe the evidence.

 Concluding Statement: Reword the goal and either add information you
learned about the topic from your text book, class discussions, and/ or
personal research OR you can extend the statement by adding a relevant
question.
11. What I Learned: Write at least one paragraph describing what you learned by
completing this activity. Be sure to use the writing prompts to help guide your
writing.