5/9/13

To use a dichotomous key you have to go through a series of numbered statements that describe a certain type of algae or anything really.  Then once you find all the ones that the numbers match, that's what you're looking for. (hard to explain)   For each number there is a choice like a.) colorless....2 or b.) colored.....6.
Then you go to the number for whatever is a true characteristic on what you're observing (we observed algae for example).  You keep on matching the statements with what you observe until you come up with a name of what it is in the end, telling you what your item is called.  The purpose of this is to learn the different characteristics of what you're trying to classify and how they are all unique from the others or similar.  When making our dichotomous key in class, we looked at how some algaes were similar and different.  The problems we ran into were trying to find something that would apply for one algae and not the others and coming up with different characteristics that were not on the chart.