Feb. 6 – Library session and "Why are cells important?"

Today we spent the first half of the class in the library to look at the career cruising website.  After answering the quizzes, you will get suggestions of possible careers for you.  Take some time to view these careers and the kind of courses you'll need to take to get there.  Here is the link:

Link: http://www2.careercruising.com/default/cplogin/YORK

Next we went back to class and discussed some more about cells.

Learning Goals: Understand why cells are important

Success Criteria: You can describe some applications based on our knowledge of cells.

I discussed how our blood is made up of cells.  Misquotes like to take our blood to drink and sometimes leave unwanted cells behind, like malaria!

Only female misquotes drink blood and only when they're ready to lay eggs.

How malaria moves around inside your blood cells.

A view of how malaria cells attack and take over our blood cells.

If we know enough about blood cells and malaria cells, we can find ways to help people who are struggling with this disease.

We then looked at the text book and took some time to read about other ways that cell research can benefit humans.

The textbook we will use.

I also talked about a person who's hand got cut off.  His arm was too injured to reattach the hand, so they sewed it to his foot to keep it alive for a month.  When his arm healed, they reattached the hand to it.

Here's the full story: Hand kept alive on foot.

How was the hand kept alive?

• It got blood from the leg.

Why does it need blood?

• Blood carries oxygen, water and nutrients to the cells in the hand, keeping it alive.

Tomorrow we will discuss more about what keeps a cell alive and all the parts that it needs to function.