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Paul Grobstein's picture

Bio 103, Lab 3, Size Relationships: From Cells to Organisms

As you've discovered, scientific research can be done (and often is done) just by trying to make sense of the world around one, with that motiving observations that in turn lead to more specific understandings and new questions and hypotheses. Scientific research can also be done by using general questions and existing observations to shape a particular hypothesis that itself motivates new observations. Today's lab is aimed at giving you some experience with the latter kind of scientific research.

We know that multicellular organisms come in a variety of sizes but have in common that they are assemblies of cells. A general question that follows from this is "is there any relation between the size of an organism and the size of the cells that make it up?".

Your task today (in groups of two) begins with thinking of some possible general answers to this question, and about which ones make good (ie interesting and testable) hypotheses. You should then pick such an hypothesis and (using tools we will make available, including a microscope) collect relevant observations.

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