Words
to know before you read
- Molecule- a chemical structure that has two or more
atoms held together by a chemical bond. Water is a molecule of
two hydrogen atoms and one oxygen atom (H2O).
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- Macromolecule- a very large molecule such as a
protein.
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Ingredients for life If you look around your
neighborhood you will see homes, stores, streets and cars. All of these things
are made from different building materials. The homes and stores are made from
bricks, cement, wood and nails. The roads are made from asphalt or cement.
All the cars are made from metal, glass, rubber and plastic. When you
look around you also see plants and animals. Just like the buildings and cars
in your neighborhood, living things are made from building materials. So what are living things made from and how are the parts put together?
As you can see from the list below, life on Earth is built from increasingly
more complex building blocks. At the widest view you have all living and
non-living things - Earth. Soon you learn that each building block seems to be
made of smaller building blocks - until you reach the smallest building block with the
funny name - quark. The list below deals with living things and how each
building block is made from yet a smaller set of building blocks.
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BIOSPHERE -
Our Earth is made up of all living and non-living things. The
interaction of all these building blocks make up the biosphere.
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ECOSYSTEM
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Communities of living things interact with non-living things. The
air, earth and water play an important role in the building blocks of
life.
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COMMUNITY
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All animals and plants that live in one place are considered a
community. This can be tricky when you include humans, because they
can move from community to community. There are also other animals, such
as birds and butterflies that migrate from community to community.
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POPULATION
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Individuals become the building blocks for a spices.
For example, the human population is made of a various races, who interact with each other to
make up this world we live in.
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INDIVIDUAL -
Individual people make up the community. Each person has their own individual characteristics that make up the diversity of the
community.
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ORGANS &
TISSUES -
The human body, like most plants and animals is made up of organs.
These are the brain, heart, kidneys, liver etc. Each organ is made of
different tissues. These tissues have their own characteristics and
function. Did you know the largest organ in the body is the skin and that
you are not wearing the same skin that
you were born with?
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CELLS -
Tissues are made of cells. The cell is the smallest unit of life.
What does that mean? It means that the cell is the smallest living thing capable of replicating.
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ORGANELLES -
Cells are also made up of individual parts? The interior of any cell has many types of
little organs- called organelles,
for example- nucleus, mitochondria, Golgi complex etc. All these
organelles have their own functions to perform within the cell.
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PROTEINS -
FATS -
CARBOHYDRATES - NUCLEIC ACIDS
What are organelles made of? All the cellular organelles are made of
macromolecules like carbohydrates, Lipids, Proteins, Nucleic acids (DNA,
RNA).
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ATOMS -
To make macromolecules involves even smaller building blocks. You may
have heard of atoms before and their parts, neutrons, protons, and
electrons. There are 92 naturally occurring atoms (also called elements)
but only 11 of these atoms are found in a significant amount in living
things. It takes only two atoms to make a molecule.
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QUARKS -
For many years it was thought that the smallest building blocks were
atoms, but now we know that it not true. Scientists have now found even
smaller building blocks than atoms. They have a funny name - quarks. There
are many "flavors" of quarks. Their names are -
up, down, top, bottom, charm and strange.
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