In this activity, students will explore the use of a hemocytometer for counting cells, demonstrate the relationship between the grid seen in the microscope with volume of liquid in suspension and count cells to determine concentration.

In this activity, students will explore the use of a hemocytometer for counting cells, demonstrate the relationship between the grid seen in the microscope with volume of liquid in suspension and count cells to determine concentration.

Size, Scales, and Specialization was developed as part of an effort by the Quantitative Biology at Community Colleges group to provide materials that incorporate mathematical concepts into biology courses. The activity uses published estimates of cell type numbers in the human body along with size, density and weight as a lens to have students calculate ratios, explore exponents, and better understand how the various cell types contribute to an average human's total weight and size. The activity is applicable for majors and non-majors biology courses, and maps to Chapter 4 of the OpenStax Biology 2e textbook. This activity could also be used in a mathematics course as a biologically relevant example.

The activity contains a pre-assessment to gauge student understanding of the material and provides an opportunity for students to predict the number of various cell types, as well as the mass of various cell types, in the human body. This prediction activity is followed with a guided approach to calculating these values. After guiding the students in this activity, students will then have a chance to practice the activity on a new set of cell data provided.

After completing this module students should be able to:

- Compare and contrast the structure and function of different cell types.
-- List the largest and the smallest cells in the body based on number.
-- List the largest and the smallest cells in the body based on mass.
- Describe the advantages of specialization in eukaryotic cells.
-- Give examples of how specialization in cell types affects cell size (volume) and shape.
- Perform measurements and conversions using the metric system.
-- Measure the scale of cell size variation in the human body
-- Calculate the relative proportions of cell types in the human body by mass and frequency

This module explores how cell size and shape varies across cell types in the human body by having students calculate relative proportions of numbers in scientific notation. The adaptation has added a review of scientific notation.

In this powerpoint, several of the resources from the published module 'Sizes, Scales and Specialization' are used to create a mini-module that has students examine the size and abundance of different human cell types using scientific notation.

Students strengthen their communicate skills about measurements by learning the meaning of base units and derived units, including speed one of the most common derived units (distance/time). Working in groups, students measure the time for LEGO MINDSTORMS(TM) NXT robots to move a certain distance. The robots are started and stopped via touch sensors and programmed to display the distance traveled. Using their collected data, students complete a worksheet to calculate the robots' (mean/average) speeds at given motor powers.

Learning Target: I can use dimensional analysis to convert units.

Students will explore different strategies to calculate feet per second to miles per hour.

Students will complete a group activity to find the speed of Barbie's car and convert the units of measure from feet per second to miles per hour.