Scientific enquiry

7A.1 What living things are made from (HSW)

You should already know Outcomes Keywords

Aristotle lived in Greece over 2000 years ago. He was very interested in Cystis
(bladder)
plants and animals, and in how the human body works. Look at the drawing
by Aristotle of some parts of the human body. We call these parts organs.
The Greeks weren’t the only people interested in how the body works.
Old drawings and texts from China and the Middle East also show human
organs. Some even show plant organs.

Aidoion Orchis
(penis) (testis)
Aristotle’s drawing

At first, information about organs came from surgical operations and from eye skull
cutting up dead bodies. Now we can look at X-rays and body scans, too.

brain

A scan through part of the head

Question 1

cartilage
A closer look at human organs
In the late 18th century, a French doctor called Xavier Bichat did hundreds
of post-mortems. Post-mortems are operations carried out on dead bodies
to find out what killed them.
Bichat found that each human organ contains more than one kind of
material. He listed 21 different kinds. Today, we call these materials bone

tissues. Bichat wasn’t able to see the detailed structure of these tissues
because he didn’t have a microscope. bone marrow

Part of a thigh bone

Question 2 3

7A Cells: the body’s building blocks 

 7A.2 How microscopes helped to change our ideas (HSW)

You should already know Outcomes Keywords

16th century
Microscopes were invented. The lenses were not very good, so the
images were not clear. The first microscopes were called simple
microscopes. They had only one lens.
1590 Two Dutch spectacle makers, Hans and Zacharias Janssen, made
a microscope with two lenses. We call this kind a compound
microscope.

17th century
English scientist Robert Hooke built a compound microscope.
Hooke’s drawing of cork cells.
1665 Hooke published the first book of drawings of microscopic
structures. One of the drawings was of a slice of cork. It showed
that cork is made up of what look like tiny boxes. He called
these boxes cells.
1673 Dutchman Antonie van Leeuwenhoek found out how to make
better lenses. He made a simple microscope with one of these
lenses. Because his lens was better, the images were clearer than
Hooke’s.
1683 Leeuwenhoek published his drawings of microscopic creatures.

19th century
1831 Scotsman Robert Brown saw that there was something inside
cells. He named this the nucleus.
1840 German scientists Matthias Schleiden and Theodor Schwann
realised that all plants and animals were made of cells. Leeuwenhoek’s microscope.
They published this idea as a theory, called cell theory.

Onion cells as seen using Robert Brown’s microscope.

Question 1 2

 7A Cells: the body’s building blocks

 7A.2 How microscopes helped to change our ideas
Scale drawings This is the real size of a flea.
When we draw what we see under a microscope, we draw things much
bigger than they really are. We draw them to scale.
We often use scale drawings in our lives, not just in science.
Maps and plans are scale diagrams. They show places smaller than they
really are. We call this scaling down.
When we show things bigger than they really are, we are scaling up.
You can show a scale in one of these ways:

20 1 mm

Robert Hooke drew a flea bigger

than it really is. This means you
can see more detail.

Under a magnifying lens, the

ladybird looks three times as
big, so the scale factor is ×3.

This is Leon’s drawing of the same ladybird.

Question 3 4 5 6

7A Cells: the body’s building blocks 

 7A.3 What cells are like

You should already know Outcomes Keywords

Cells are very small

Remember that all living things are made of cells and that cells are so small
that you need a microscope to see them.
If you magnify cells a hundred times or more, you can see the smaller parts
inside them.
Not everything has got this type of detail. Many non-living things show no
structure when you look at them under a light microscope.

A B

C D

Four microscope views of living and non-living things.

Question 1

Cells are not all alike

All cells are very small. But they are not all the same size.
In this square, , you could fit 2500 rhubarb skin cells or 10 000
human skin cells.
Cells also vary in shape.
Plant and animal cells look quite different under the microscope.
Plant and
animal cells.

Question 2

 7A Cells: the body’s building blocks

 7A.3 What cells are like
A closer look at animal cells
Cells are made of lots of different parts. Each part has a different
job to do to keep the cell alive and working properly.
Chris made a slide of some cheek cells.
nucleus
The picture shows what they looked like under the microscope.

Cheek cells.
Chris scraped some cells
from the skin inside her cytoplasm
cheek.
cell membrane

Under the microscope the cells look

coloured. The colour is a stain that
makes them show up more clearly.

Question 3 4

Plant cells aren’t quite the same

Chris also made a slide of a moss leaf.
The picture shows what the cells looked like under
cytoplasm
a microscope. chloroplast
nucleus
cell membrane

Cells in a moss leaf.

vacuole
cell wall

A moss plant.

Question 5 6 7 8

Plant cells vary too. Rhubarb plant.

rhubarb
leaf stalk
Microscope view of rhubarb
leaf stalk cells.

Question 9

7A Cells: the body’s building blocks 

 7A.4 Different cells for different jobs

You should already know Outcomes Keywords

There are over a million different types of animal. They all have different dust carried out
of breathing tubes
shapes and sizes. But in all these animals, there are only about 200 different
kinds of cell. These cells are different because of the jobs they do, not
because of the kind of animal they are found in.
Each kind of cell can do the same job in lots of different animals.
For example, when you breathe in air, you breathe in dust and micro-
organisms too. They can harm your lungs. Two kinds of cells on the inside of
the breathing tubes of humans and other animals help to stop this happening.
One kind makes the lining sticky with mucus. Dust and micro-organisms get
trapped in this mucus. We call these cells goblet cells because of their shape. mucus and dust this cell
The other kind has tiny hairs that carry the mucus out of your lungs. We call secretes
these cells ciliated epithelial cells. (Cilia = beating hairs. Epithelium = skin tiny hairs (cilia) mucus

or lining.)
What the lining of your
windpipe looks like.
Question 1

More specialised cells

very long nerve fibre

senses in connections to nerve cells in
your fingers your brain and spinal cord

Nerve cells are very long. They carry messages in the form of nerve
impulses from one part of your body to another. Your brain and spinal
cord send and receive nerve impulses from all over your body.

Red blood cells are full of a chemical called B

haemoglobin. This can combine with oxygen.
So red blood cells can carry oxygen to every
cell in the body.

It’s not just animals that have special cells. Plants take
water in through special cells in their roots. They are inside the
soil and water
called root hair cells. The hairs give them a bigger root
surface for absorbing water.

root hair cell

Question 2 3 4
A

 7A Cells: the body’s building blocks

 7A.4 Different cells for different jobs
How cells work together
building
materials cells

parts of tissues
room

room
organs

house plant

How building materials build up into a house. How cells build up into a plant.

A house doesn’t look like a living thing. However, the way the building
materials of a house are grouped is similar to the way that cells in a living
thing are organised.
The bricks in a house are like the cells in a living thing. A group of bricks
is called a wall. A group of similar cells is called a tissue. All the cells in a
tissue are the same and work together to do the same job.

Question 5

In a house, different groups of building materials are joined together to

make the rooms. In a living thing, several tissues are joined together to
make an organ.
There are many different rooms in a house, and each room is needed for a
different reason. In a living thing there are many different organs, and each
organ has a different job.

Question 6 7 8

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7A Cells: the body’s building blocks 

 7A.5 How new cells are made

You should already know Outcomes Keywords

People used to think that living things sometimes appeared out of

nowhere. They saw for themselves that maggots appear in rotting meat.
Leeuwenhoek described tiny living animals in rotting things. So the idea
seemed to be sensible.
In the 19th century, Louis Pasteur proved that this idea was wrong.
He showed that living things come only from other living things.
Cells are the building blocks of life. Like all living things, they don’t just
appear from nowhere either.
In 1858, a German scientist called Rudolph Virchow suggested that new
cells could only grow from cells that were already there. Now we know
that new cells form only when existing cells divide.

Question 1

How a cell divides

The nucleus divides first, then the cell. As the new cells take in more
materials, they grow. When they are big enough, the cells divide again.
We call this the cell cycle.

nucleus

cell

cell

specialised cell
The cell cycle.

Question 2

 7A Cells: the body’s building blocks

 7A.5 How new cells are made
Plant cell division
When a plant cell divides, it’s not just the nucleus and cytoplasm that
divide. A new cell wall has to form between the new nuclei.

nucleus divides to new cell

form two nuclei wall forms
How a plant cell divides.

Specialised cells
Some cells divide over and over again, but other cells become specialised
to do particular jobs. Specialised cells don’t divide again.

Question 3 4

The nucleus controls how a cell develops

The nucleus of a cell holds all the information that tells a cell how to
work and develop. Before it divides, the nucleus makes a copy of this
information. One copy goes into each new nucleus. So the new cells are
identical to the old ones.

Unspecialised cells divide

over and over again.

Muscle cells are specialised.

They don’t divide.

Review your work

Question 5 Summary

7A Cells: the body’s building blocks 

 7A.HSW How ideas change

You should already know Outcomes Keywords

New evidence, new explanations

Just like detectives, scientists try to explain the evidence that they collect.
They suggest theories based on the evidence they have at the time.
With new evidence, they may change their ideas and suggest new theories.

You have seen how ideas about the tissues of the human body changed
following technological developments.

Observation with the naked eye recognising tissues

Invention of the microscope.

Observation under a microscope discovery of cells

Improvement of microscopes parts discovered inside cells.

Question 1

During the 17th and early 18th centuries, people improved both lenses
and microscopes. Only after German instrument manufacturer Carl Zeiss
teamed up with Ernst Abbe in 1866 did the next big change take place.
The microscopes you use in school are probably something like the one in
the picture.
Abbe’s microscope had two lenses, a stage and a mirror. Look back at
Topic 7A.2 to see how different it is from Leeuwenhoek’s microscope.

10 7A Cells: the body’s building blocks

 7A.HSW How ideas change
What Zeiss and Abbe did
Studying cells is part of biology.
Zeiss was a manufacturer of scientific instruments, including
Studying light and optics is part of physics.
microscopes. He asked Abbe to use optics theory to design a
better microscope. Applying science is technology.

Abbe’s first systems didn’t work, so he began to do The story of cells shows the importance of
experiments. He didn’t just use lenses but also looked at what working together.
happens to light as it passes through lenses to form an image.
From a series of experiments, he was able Scientists gather evidence by observing and
experimenting.
• to suggest a theory about how microscope images formed,
They use the evidence to make theories –
• to test his theory by doing more experiments,
and then gather more evidence to test
• then put his theory into practice in his designs.
those theories.

Question 2 3

One theory that came out of Abbe’s experiments was the discovery that
there is a limit to what can be seen clearly using a light microscope.
He predicted that the magnification obtained using future ‘microscopes’
might not limited by the properties of light.

Magnifying even more

Abbe’s prediction came true in 1931, when the German engineers Ernst
Ruska and Max Knoll invented the first basic electron microscope.
They, and others, soon made improvements.
Electron microscopes use:

• a beam of electrons rather than a beam of light;

• magnets, not lenses, to focus the beam;
• a screen to view the objects.
Some modern electron microscopes magnify objects up to two million Electron microscope.
times. That is 1000 times more than the very best light microscopes.
Look at the picture of the chloroplasts magnified 18,000 times using an
electron microscope. You can see in Topic 7A.3 what they look like using
a light microscope.

Chloroplasts.
Question 4

7A Cells: the body’s building blocks 11

 7A.HSW How ideas change
Changing ideas about babies
Ideas about where babies come from also changed with the invention
New evidence changed ideas
of the microscope.
about reproduction.
If you had lived more than 250 years ago, you probably didn’t know
exactly where babies came from. Look at the table.

Evidence Who and when Fluid passed from a man into a woman to
make a baby contains …
A fluid (semen) Hippocrates … tiny body parts.
was involved. (about 2500 years ago)

Under a microscope, they Antonie van Leeuwenhoek, … ‘animalcules’.

could see tiny swimming Nicolas Hartsoeker, others Some scientists claimed to see miniature
things in semen. (over 300 years ago) humans inside the animalcules from humans.
They were called homunculi, the Latin world
for ‘little men’.

Experiments showed that Lazzaro Spallanzani … sperm that joined with a woman’s egg cell.
both sperm and egg cell were (about 200 years ago)
needed to make a baby.

A homunculus in a sperm.
(The plural is homunculi.)

Question 5 6

12 7A Cells: the body’s building blocks

7A Questions

7A.1
1 Write down the names of two organs that you can see on:
a Aristotle’s drawing;
b the head scan.
2 Look at the picture of a thigh bone. Write down the names of three tissues in
this bone.
3 What do we use to see what the cells in these tissues are like?

7A.2
1 In one sentence, write down what you think that cell theory says.
2 What is the difference between a simple and a compound microscope?
3 a Why did Hooke draw the flea larger than life?
b Is this scaling up or scaling down?
c Adding a scale would make Hooke’s drawing more useful. Explain why.
4 a How long is the ladybird in Leon’s drawing?
b How many times longer is the drawing than the real ladybird?
c What is the scale factor of the drawing?
5 Draw the ladybird magnified 20 times.
Remember to put a scale on your drawing.
6 Think about two jobs in which people draw things to scale.
Explain why they need to use scale drawings.

7A Cells: the body’s building blocks 13

 7A Questions

7A.3
1 Look at the microscope views of living and non-living things. Which ones do
you think are of living things? Explain your answers.
2 Look at the diagrams of plant and animal cells. Describe two differences
between them.
3 Which part of a cell controls everything that goes on in the cell?
4 Why do you think a cell membrane is very thin?
5 Name the cell parts that plants have that animal cells don’t.
6 Which part controls what happens in a plant cell?
7 The roots of a plant are not green.
Which part of a plant cell shown in the diagram is missing from root cells?
8 Write down one difference between each of these pairs of cell parts.
a A nucleus and a chloroplast.
b A cell wall and a cell membrane.
9 Write down two differences between the moss cells and the rhubarb cells.

7A.4
1 a How are ciliated epithelial cells different from other animal cells?
b These cells work with the goblet cells to do a particular job.
What is this job?
2 How long is the nerve cell from your fingertip to your spinal cord? (Hint:
measure the distance from your backbone to your fingertip.)
3 The more haemoglobin there is in a red blood cell, the more oxygen it can
carry. Red blood cells do not have a nucleus. Why do you think this is?
4 The diagram shows two cells from a root.
Why do you think the root hair cell (A) can take in more water than the other
root cell (B)?
5 Muscle cells work together in muscle tissue.
What do you think is the job of muscle tissue?
6 The leaf of a plant is an organ. It is made of several different tissues.
What job does the leaf do?
7 Why is a petal an organ?
8 a Can you think of some rooms in a house that are the same?
b You have more than one of some organs in your body.
Write down one example.

14 7A Cells: the body’s building blocks

 7A Questions

7A.5
1 Write down two reasons why it was easy for people living 300 years ago to
believe that living things sometimes appeared out of nowhere.
2 Make a copy of the cell cycle diagram. Complete the labels on
your copy.
3 In the division of animal and plant cells:
a what is the same?
b what is different?
4 Write down one reason why a specialised cell can’t divide.
5 Describe how information passes to new cells.

7A.HSW
1 Discuss the links between the development of scientific ideas such as cell
theory and technological developments such as the microscope.
2 In developing his microscopes, Abbe did experiments on two things.
What were they?
3 Abbe worked in a scientific way.
Discuss what that means.
4 Find out some examples of the magnifications obtained using
electron microscopes.
5 Some scientists claimed to see ‘homunculi’ in sperm. Perhaps they saw what
they wanted to see or didn’t want to admit that they couldn’t see anything.
a Discuss why the idea of homunculi lasted for over 100 years.
b Discuss what can you learn from this story when you make observations
in science.
6 We now know that a sperm doesn’t contain a homunculus that grows into
a baby.
a What is needed to make a baby?
b How did Spallanzani obtain the evidence?

7A Cells: the body’s building blocks 15

 7A Summary

Keywords

The cytoplasm is
where large numbers The cell membrane The nucleus controls the
of chemical reactions controls what goes into cell’s activities, growth
happen. and out of cells. and division.

Cells have different parts, Cells divide to

which have different jobs. make new cells.

Life processes depend All living things Large living things have
on chemical reactions
are made of cells. millions of cells.
in cells.

Some cells are

specialised. They are Plant cells have parts that
adapted to the jobs that animal cells don’t have.
they do.
Different cells support
different life processes.
Chloroplasts trap Vacuoles are full
the light energy of liquid cell sap Cell walls support
that plants use to in the centre of the plant cells.
make food. cell.
A group of similar cells
is called a tissue.

Cells are so small that we

We can draw what
An organ is made up need to use a microscope
we see to scale.
of several tissues. to see them.

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136 Summaries