|
|
|
Structure
Interesting Questions, Facts and Information
- There are a total of 50 general entries. We are selecting 30 for display.
Special Topics
|
 Interesting Questions, Facts, and Information
 Biology for Kids
| Bacteria are organisms that cause certain diseases in the human body. A scientist named Alexander Fleming discovered a medicine that could resist bacteria and therefore prevent infections. What was the name of this medicine? | Glorious Biology for Kids!
|
Penicillin. Penicillin is a type of antibiotic. It was a magnificent discovery at the time; however, it is now being overused to the point that bacteria are becoming resistant to the penicillin. This makes the medicine worthless in some cases! Many people, including myself, are allergic to penicillin, so, always ask a parent or teacher before going anywhere near any medicine!
Thanks for playing this biological quiz!
Egg. More formally, this egg is known as an ovum. Most mammals start off as an egg (from the mother) and a sperm (from the male). This forms a cell which divides in a process called mitosis into more and more cells until eventually, you have an embryo. This embryo eventually develops into you! Cell division continues throughout your life.
| The iris is a flower that can come in a whole range of different colours. However, it is also a muscle in what part of the human body? | Glorious Biology for Kids!
|
Eye. The iris, found in the eye, is the muscle that surrounds the pupil. Like the flower, the iris muscle can also come in a whole range of colours, such as blue, green, brown and even gray! The iris controls the size of the pupil, which is basically just a hole in your eyeball through which light can enter.
| The "control centre" of every single cell in your body is called the nucleus. Inside the nucleus are the coding strands that make you, you! What three letters are given to this universal substance? | Glorious Biology for Kids!
|
DNA. DNA is short for...wait for it...deoxyribonucleic acid. Mouthful indeed! DNA contains genes which code for everything from the colour of your eyes and hair to whether you have certain diseases or not.
DNA is universal because the same DNA that codes for your characteristics code for characteristics in whales and even bananas!
| Now, your body is made up of a basic unit called the cell. These cells contain organelles which carry out important functions. What organelle can be found in a plant cell but not an animal cell? | Glorious Biology for Kids!
|
Chloroplast. Chloroplasts are organelles that are only found in plant cells. They contain a compound called chlorophyll, which traps sunlight and combines it with water and carbon dioxide gas to make energy for the plant to use. Animal cells don't need this as they use oxygen gas in a process known as respiration. This takes place in the organelle called a mitochondrion. Plants also have mitochondria, so that they can gain energy at night!
Fungi. There are many different types of mushroom. Some are edible such as the very expensive truffle (chocolate truffles are much nicer than horrible mushrooms!) and everyday button mushrooms you can get from your local supermarket. Some are poisonous and can kill you, so, if you are ever out in the wild, never pick a mushroom and eat it - it could be the last thing you do. Beware!
That terrifying word, pteridophyta, is the name of the group which gives us the fern!
| Plants are an important aspect of biological studies and are also vital for human survival. What is the name given to the specific study of plants? | Glorious Biology for Kids!
|
Botany. Botany is the study of the structure and the functions of a plant. You study everything from why a plant is a certain colour to how it makes its own food. If you study a botany degree, you also find out that plants are often given names in Latin!
Zoology is another biological study, though, zoologists specialise in animals. Astronomy is the study of space and plantology is a figment of my imagination!
Yes. The marine iguanas of the Galapagos are true reptiles who dive into the surf for food. They sun themselves on the rocky shores of the islands to get warm, and then dive back in for more food. Males can grow to as big as 1.5m (~5ft) and the much smaller females only grow to 0.6m (~2ft).
| As depicted in "Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End", the Kraken is SAID to be what type of mollusk? | Marine Biology Fun Facts
|
cephalopod. Pintel: "That's an enormous fish!"
Rigetti: "Actually, it's a cephalopod"
This is an excerpt of dialog from the film in which the hapless comedic duo encounter the Kraken on the beach. It's my favorite quote from the movie!
Cephalopod, meaning "head-foot", refers to all squid and octopuses. All mollusks (clams, snails, squids, etc) have a muscular "foot." For example, snails are gastropods, meaning "stomach-foot", which refers to the fact that their foot is located on their stomach. The "foot" of the octopus is located on its head!
giant squid. The giant squid, now officially caught on film, has an eye the size of a dinner plate! Before the Japanese scientists released the video footage, the only specimens recovered were dead squids that would wash up on shores. Proof of the squids' existence were visible in the form of sucker scars along the heads and bodies of sperm whales. Since sperm whales dive deeper than any other whale for food, they were the only ones to encounter the deep water giant squids.
coral reef. The Great Barrier Reef off the coast of Australia covers a distance of over 2,600 km (1,600 miles)! Coral reefs are created by coral polyps, relatives of jellyfish, who grow in large colonies and build large skeletons out of calcium carbonate. Corals cannot move to hunt for food, and must have an odd type of algae (called zooxanthellae, pronounced zo-zan-thell-ie) live INSIDE them in order to get enough food to survive. Without the coral,the zooxanthellae would be exposed to predators, and without the zooxanthellae, the corals starve.
| Sea urchins, starfish, and seacucumbers all belong to the phylum Echinodermata. If "dermata" refers to skin, what does "echino" mean? | Marine Biology Fun Facts
|
spined. Even though they belong to this classification, sea cucumbers are actually soft-spined, and only have the appearance of being painful. All of these organisms have either hard or soft plates in their skin. They do not have brains or hearts either, but they do have a complex stomach system and a "nerve net" to help them respond to the environment. FUN FACT: Did you know that starfish actually turn their stomachs inside out to eat their prey outside of their bodies?
animals. Hard to believe, but yes they are classified in the animal kingdom (phylum porifera). Although they don't have a heart or brain the way we do, they have a complex network of pores and tunnels, kind of like our circulatory system. They pump water from the outside environment through these tunnels and filter out small organisms and nutrients for food. FUN FACT: If you were to put a specific type of sponge (class demospongae) in a blender and blend it up it would reform into its original shape! No other organism can do that!
| A lot of people know what seahorses look like, but what more general group of organisms do they belong to? | Marine Biology Fun Facts
|
fish. Seahorses are related to pipefish and seadragons. If you look closely, you can see that they have gills and fins just like any fish. Their mouths are heavily modified to eat only very tiny shrimp and other animal plankton known as zooplankton.
Iron. Iron is very important in making red blood cells. If you don't get enough it can make you feel weak and tired. This is called iron deficieny (de-fish-en-see) anemia and you might have to eat lots of green vegetables because they have plenty of iron in them!
| All these types of blood cells are tiny but in order to flow around the body they are all in a special liquid. What is the name of this liquid? | The Red Stuff - The Blood Quiz!
|
Plasma. Plasma is actually a clear, pale yellow liquid - it is the red blood cells that gives blood its colour - but it makes up about half of all our blood.
Transfusion. If you are very sick and you are given blood it is called a transfusion (trans-few-shun). It is important to be given the right blood type but in an emergency doctors can give Type O blood to everybody because it is safe no matter what type your blood is.
Lots of them stick together to seal the cut. Platelets are great! They flow along in the blood until you get a cut and then they leap into action. Lots of them group together with a special protein that is also in your blood called fibrinogen (fy-brin-oh-gen). This forms a clot which blocks up the hole made by the cut and stops you bleeding.
They fight infection. White blood cells work really hard when we get sick. There are always in our blood but if we get an infection, they start to multiply, making lots of new white blood cells. They fight infection by surrounding any infection cells, or other things that shouldn't be in your blood, to stop them from doing harm to other bits of your body.
Bone marrow. Red blood cells are made in our bone marrow and then sent out to do the work. After about four months of rushing around our bodies, these cells get tired and are sent back to the bone marrow where they get recycled and made into brand new red blood cells.
Oxygen. We get oxygen from breathing. As we pull the air into our lungs, our blood cells move by and collect the oxygen from our breath and they drop off carbon dioxide for us to breathe out.
Heart. The heart is like a big pump and every time it beats it sends blood throughout our bodies. Each beat sends it further along and when the blood has done its job it comes back to the heart to get a new job to do, before being pumped out again.
Heart. Our heart pumps blood which needs to be supplied to all other parts of the body.
| In 1928, Alexander Fleming discovered the first antibiotic. What was this antibiotic called? | Microbiology For Kids!
|
Penicillin. Fleming discovered penicillin by accident. He observed that a bacterial culture grew on a culture plate but not near a fungus that was contaminating part of the plate. He postulated that the fungus contained a substance that inhibited the growth of bacteria. Later this substance was found to be penicillin. Erythromycin, ampicillin and tetracycline are all antibiotics but were discovered after penicillin.
| A doctor must have sterile instruments before operating to prevent infection. What does sterile mean in this case? | Microbiology For Kids!
|
Instruments that are free from microbes. Sterilization means free from microbial contamination. Washing instruments will not remove all bacteria. Instruments that look clean may not be sterile as microbes are too small to be seen by the eye. For instruments to be sterile, they must be subjected to both high temperature and pressure for 10-15 minutes depending on what is being sterilized.
| Louis Pasteur was one of the greatest scientists the world has ever seen. In 1864, Pasteur invented a method to prevent milk from being contaminated with microbes that may harm the person if they drank untreated milk. What was this process eventually called? | Microbiology For Kids!
|
Pasteurization. Pasteurization is a method where milk is heated for a set time to kill all the microbes but not damage the milk. Homogenization is a method for distributing the cream evenly throughout the milk. Refrigeration is a process where by keeping the temperature of food cool it slows down (but does not stop) the growth of microbes in any particular food. Filtration is a method where you have a barrier to let through some particles or liquid through but not others
Wash your hands to prevent contaminating the food. In 1840 Ignaz Semmelweis proved that washing hands could prevent the spread of infection. Today this is still the best way to prevent spreading an infection from one person to another.
| What did the inventor of the microscope call the microscopic life he saw under his microscope? | Microbiology For Kids!
|
Animalcules. Anton van Leeuwenhoek looked at many things under the microscope including water, teeth scrapings, minerals and blood.
Anton van Leeuwenhoek. Anton van Leeuwenhoek used glass lenses to inspect cloth. He used this knowledge to make the first microscope, an instrument that could magnify the microscopic world 270 times their actual size. The other three scientists were very special and each invented many items but none of them worked with microscopes and microorganisms like Mr van Leeuwenhoek.
| In 1665 Robert Hooke published "Micrographia", a book on microscopic and telescopic observations. In this book he describes the basic unit of life, the smallest living thing. What did he call this "unit"? | Microbiology For Kids!
|
a cell . Hooke described the cell which is the functional and structural building block for all living things. A bacterium is a very small single-celled organism. An element is a pure substance consisting of only a single type of atom. A molecule is a group of atoms joined together that have no net electrical charge.
|
Play Now! 