Surface Area, Volume, and Cells

On Friday, we used cubes as model cells to gather data about how surface area and volume change as cell size increases.  Many of you were quite sharp in observing how a cell's smaller size allows it to maximize its surface area and minimize its volume.  We generated this graph with your model cell data, where green represents volume and blue represents surface area:

Surface area is so important to a cell that they have arrived at all sorts of tricks to maximize their total surface while keeping their volume the same.  There's a good summary of how different organisms cope with the "efficiency problem" posed by SA:V ratio here: Beating the SA:V Ratio Problem.


Homework
Prepare your assessment statements based on the work we did this week.  For each assessment statement, please follow the "magistri guidelines" in order to achieve maximum credit.  For example, for 2.1.5, about calculating magnification, it is essential that you show two sample problems.  These can be taken from our classwork.  Feel free to even cut out and paste in the images from the homework handout.


Your first quiz will be on Monday for R6 and Tuesday for R4 (same as lab day).


Have an excellent weekend!
-Mr. Hill