Week 4 · Readings & resources

Week 4 — Readings & Resources

Introduction to Biology Free sample edition

Your primary reading is Chapter 4 (in this module). Everything below is the optional, go-deeper layer — pick what helps, skip the rest.

How to use this page

This page has 10 items (4 readings and 6 videos). Allow 64–75 minutes for everything. Each group points back to the matching chapter section and class-session segment, so use the full menu when you want more, or take the quick path below.

Every video here has captions: turn them on with the CC button in the player. The chapter covers the same ideas in text.

Pick-one quick path (20–20 min total)

① What a cell is built from, part by part

Chapter 4, Section “Tour the eukaryotic cell: read each part for its job” · Session 1, Segment 2, “Touring the organelles” · Remember: every cell has a membrane, cytoplasm, DNA, and ribosomes, and in a eukaryotic cell each organelle's structure suits its job.

Prokaryotic vs Eukaryotic: The Differences — FuseSchool - Global Education — a three-minute animation that sorts cells into the two kinds by whether the DNA sits inside a nucleus; listen for the parts both kinds share and check them against the chapter's four. (video, 3 min) (captions: creator)
Eukaryopolis - The City of Animal Cells: Crash Course Biology #4 — CrashCourse — a lively tour of an animal cell told as a city, with each organelle given a civic job; it names a few structures the chapter skips, such as cilia and the cytoskeleton, so treat those as extras. (video, 12 min) (captions: creator)
Cell Parts — Ask A Biologist — an illustrated page that walks through the parts of animal, plant, fungal, and bacterial cells, with a cell viewer game; compare its description of the membrane's water-loving heads and water-fearing tails with the chapter's. Use it while working through the Week-4 module overview. (reading, 8–12 min)
What is a cell? — MedlinePlus Genetics — a short health-reference page listing the major parts of a human cell and the job of each; notice that it lists no chloroplast, central vacuole, or cell wall, because these are human cells. (reading, 3–5 min)

② What crosses the border, and which way water goes

Chapter 4, Section “Follow passive transport: downhill and free” · Session 2, Segment 5, “Passive transport” · Remember: passive transport runs downhill for free, osmosis moves water toward the side with more solute, and active transport runs uphill and pays in ATP.

In Da Club - Membranes & Transport: Crash Course Biology #5 — CrashCourse — a fast episode on diffusion, osmosis, channel proteins, active transport, and the pumps that spend ATP; this builds on Week 3's work with phospholipids, the molecule the membrane is made from. Stop at the segment on ATP itself; next week takes energy and ATP up. (video, 12 min) (captions: creator)
Hypertonic, Hypotonic and Isotonic Solutions! — BOGObiology — a short review of the three tonicity words as relative terms, read from the cell's side, with what happens to animal and plant cells in each; it adds the words plasmolysis and cytolysis, which the chapter does not use. (video, 5 min) (captions: creator)
The Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2003 - Popular information — NobelPrize.org — a plain-language account of the protein channels that let water and ions cross the cell membrane; read the opening sections on water channels to see facilitated diffusion and osmosis at the scale of a single protein. (reading, 8–12 min)

③ Why cells stay small

Chapter 4, Section “Explain why cells stay small: surface area versus volume” · Session 2, Segment 8, “Why cells stay small” · Remember: as a cell grows, volume grows faster than surface area, so the surface-area-to-volume ratio falls and the cell must divide, flatten, or fold.

Cell Surface Area: Volume Ratio — sci-ology — a calm explainer on why the ratio falls as a cell grows and the ways cells add surface; pause it after each calculation and redo the arithmetic yourself, surface area first, then volume, then divide. (video, 7 min) (captions: creator)
Why are cells so small? — MooMooMath and Science — a bench demonstration with colored gel cubes of different sizes soaking in a liquid, showing how far the color travels into small and large cubes in the same time; connect what you see to the cube cell's falling ratio. (video, 5 min) (captions: automatic)

Optional one-stop reference (free online reference)

Cell Membrane (Plasma Membrane) — National Human Genome Research Institute Talking Glossary — the course's free glossary of genetic terms, open at its entry for the cell membrane; read the definition and the short narration text, and skip the related-term links, which reach beyond this week. (reading, 1–2 min)

Heads-up (links rot): these point to outside sites that occasionally move or rename pages. If a link ever fails, tell your instructor and use the reference above in the meantime.

Provenance: Built with The Course Maker · samples.thecoursemaker.com