Children's Museum Science Lab
Making CELLS
CELLS: BUILDING BLOCKS OF LIFE
April 2nd, 2013
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John giving the lecture on cells |
Below we are building an animal or human cell. A cell is
a jelly like fluid, called a cytoplasm, surrounded by a membrane.
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cell with a nucleus
A cell is
a jelly like fluid, called a cytoplasm, surrounded by a membrane. The
membrane lets good stuff in and keeps bad stuff out. Floating around
in the cytoplasm are the organelles doing their jobs: a nucleus, E.R.,
ribosomes, Golgi bodies, mitochondria. The organelles work hard, making
protein, turn food into energy, and get waste out.
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A cell has lysosomes and peroxysomes. Plants and
animals, are made of eukaryotic cells, which means that their generic
material is surrounded by a membrane. Together the genes and the
membrane form an organelle called the nucleus. The other type of cell,
prokaryotic, has no nucleus. Genetic information in prokaryotic cells
just sort of float free in the cytoplasm.
Most prokaryotes are single-celled bacteria, like
Lactobacillus acidophilus, which is used to make yogurt. In any
different organism, different cells carry out very different specialized
functions. As a result they can look very different. Cells can be
star shaped-bone cell; muscle cells can be stretchy, and nerve cells can
be really long.
Other cells like bacteria have little hairs growing
out of it to help it move around, and red-blood cells are shaped like
little bowls, and plant cells have a rigid cell wall that help them to
maintain their shape.
Inside the human body cells can vary in size from
being microscopic to over a meter long. We have about 75 trillion cells
in each of our bodies, that is enough to stretch around the planet 47
times!!
Below, the cell shape has been changed from a circle into a rectangle, to help it become a plant cell.
Then we turned the animal/human cell into a plant cell by adding vacuoles and chloroplasts organelles.
(If you want to know where I got the wording for my cell descriptions, I edited a cartoon on "Cells"; from a "BrainPop" cartoon.)
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The finished product; ready to be hanged up as a decoration! (once the clay dries, of course!) |
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