The Ideal Cell Size Lab

Prelab Questions

1. What is the basic structure of a cell?

All cells have a cell membrane, ribosomes, cytoplasm, DNA.

2. What are some factors that could limit the ability of cells to survive?

Environment, predation, mutations, disease, the ability to obtain nutrients and get rid of waste

3. Could any of these factors also limit the size of cells? Write your ideas here:

The ability to process nutrients is probably the biggest limiting factor for growth and cell size. If a cell is unable to obtain the nutrients that it needs then its growth would be reduced and possible death would occur.

4. How do cells obtain materials they need and get rid of waste products?

Cells obtain the material they need through the cell membrane (diffusion), once in the cell then the cell must transport those materials throughout the cell to all of the different organelles and the same must occur with waste except the cell with move this material out of the cell.

5. In this lab, we will investigate the ability of three model cells of different sizes to obtain nutrients from their environment. If the cell sizes are 2 cm3, 1 cm3 and .5 cm3, which cell do you think will be more successful? The smallest one since it will have less volume for the nutrients to travel to making for a more efficient nutrient transaction.

6. Explain your reasoning: Answers will very: should be good explanation as to why they picked the size they did.

7. What do the cubes represent? Different size cells.

8. What does the iodine represent? Nutrients for the cells

Post Lab Questions

1. What is a potato? It is a starch

2. Why did the diffusion of iodine into the potato cube cause the color change from white to black? Cells of the potato absorbed the iodine through the cell membrane and since iodine is an indicator for starch, which a potato is, it had to change color.

3. If each cube represented a living cell, and the iodine solution was a substance needed within the cell,...