Educating Risa

Here’s a simple, 5-minute lesson about cell scale and size from a site about genetics from the University of Utah. It allows the viewer to zoom in using a simple slider, seeing smaller and smaller objects. It starts with a coffee bean, a grain of rice and a sesame seed, and works through a variety of items (largely different sorts of human cells, and viruses / bacteria) down to a molecule of water and a carbon atom. Note that as this is from a university site, it includes both (human) sperm and egg as objects along the way—just FYI as I know different families have different views on topics surrounding human sexuality. I showed it to my two boys and they thought it was pretty neat. They both wanted to move the slider themselves (smaller, and then back again larger), and had some sense of scale as they know what molecules and atoms are. Daegan’s comment: “Oh, so that’s why they use microscopes!”