Cells
An onion has a very thin layer between the thicker layers. You can see its cells with a hand lens. If it curls, put a drop of water on it. Try some food colouring in the water. Draw some pictures with a pencil. Then try some very thin slices of celery. Try a flower petal or two. make careful sketches of the best views.
My cell job is …
You are just one of the cell gang, hanging around in the tissue. Choose your own tissue and write about the hard work you have to do. (e.g. you could be the ankle bones of a jogger, a red blood cell).
Stop the spread
As a microbiology student, your expertise is needed after you become shipwrecked with other people on a desert island. Several of the survivors become ill after a few days on the island. Suggest some precautions and actions you would insist upon being carried out.
What might happen?
Mack the student was told to buy dried food and plenty of fruit to carry on the 4 day hike by the outdoor education teacher. Mack didn’t like dried food or fruit so he bought buns and frozen hamburgers instead. By the third day in his back pack …
Write and perform a scene from a play.
Bugs Poem – can you write your own verse?
Coughs and sneezes
Spread diseases
Catch the germs
In your handkerchief.
[Author and © unknown.]
The Window in St. Martin’s Stomach
In the early 1800’s, major surgery was uncommon because the patients almost always died. Therefore, very little was known about how digestion actually works in a living person The parts of the body were known from dissection, but not the ways in which they did their jobs.
In April 1822, a badly wounded man was brought to William Beaumont, a medical officer living in the backwoods of America. A shotgun had blown a hole in the lower left chest of Alexis St Martin who was a rough, tough trapper.
The doctor patched the hole in the chest, but it healed in a very strange way. The outer wall of the chest sealed neatly onto the inner wall of the stomach, leaving a small (2cm) hole from the chest into the stomach. St Martin had to wear a bandage over the hole to stop food from leaking out.
Doctor Beaumont did several experiments with St Martin and observed by looking in through the hole in his stomach. Beaumont found out a lot about the human stomach and the way food is digested.
1.Describe five experiments you could perform on St Martin, without hurting him. For each experiment, describe how you will do it with pictures and the equipment you will need, also with pictures. You may need to design special equipment.
2. Describe how you might convince him to stay and be experimented upon and not return to the bush.
3.Imagine you are Alexis St Martin and write half a page describing the same experiments as you described above. Write as though you were explaining to your trapper friends, perhaps over a drink in the local tavern.
Leadership Speech
Imagine you are the leader of the “Germbusters” squad of white blood cells. Prepare a “pep talk” to give to your troops when the dreaded viruses invade.
Jenny
(A story by Paul Gallico – hoping Mr. Gallico wouldn’t mind this non-profit use of the excerpt)
“Jenny” is a story about an alley cat called Jenny who adopts a stray cat called Peter. It turns out that Peter is really a boy who has been changed into a cat by an accident. Jenny has to teach him how to behave like a cat …
“When in doubt – any kind of doubt – Wash!”
“That is rule number one,” said Jenny.
“If you have committed any kind of an error and someone scolds you – wash”, she was saying.
“If you slip and fall off something and somebody laughs at you – wash. If you are getting the worst of an argument and want to stop fighting, start washing. Remember, every cat respects another cat while she is washing. That’s our first rule of social behaviour and you must also follow the rule.”
“If you come into a room full of people and you get confused, sit down in the middle and start washing. They will end up by quieting down and watching you. Some noise frightens you into a jump and somebody you know saw you were frightened – begin washing immediately.”
“Something hurt you? Wash it!”
“Feel sad? Wash away your blues!”
“And”, concluded Jenny, drawing a long breath, “of course you also wash to get clean and to keep clean.”
“Goodness!” said Peter, quite worried, “I don’t see how I could possibly remember them all.”
“You don’t have to remember any of it, actually”, Jenny explained. “All that you have to remember is Rule Number One – WHEN IN DOUBT, WASH!!!”
As cats may remain still for hours on end, perhaps write a series of observations of your cat in the half hour before dinner, or when there is a strange cat in the garden. Or choose a dog when it is playing with a brother or sister, but through the window so the observer does not interfere with the behaviours.