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Hello, students of science! Let's talk about the characteristics of life. Your
target is being able to explain the characteristics of life and why we need them.
And why we need them is, more or less, to be able to tell whether or not something is alive.
You'd think that'd be a pretty easy question, but when we get to some of our later
topics, you'll see, it's not actually. First up, all life that we are aware of is made
out of cells. Cells are the smallest living things. Of course there are things
that are smaller than cells (like atoms and molecules), but those things are
aren't alive. Here we have something like single-cell bacteria, these unicellular
little creatures that you'll find in pond water. They are small and there
are, of course, made of things that are smaller, but those things that they're
made of? Not actually alive. Here we can see this is the head of the pin and these
are just a few cells, anywhere between 10 to 12. Those tiny, tiny, tiny cells might grow
up to be an incredibly large organism, but this one here definitely
multicellular. Next up, reproduction. More or less, that means making more organisms.
We got two different types of reproduction. We've got sexual
reproduction (that's with a partner). This is the, uhm, most school friendly picture I
intend on showing you about sexual reproduction. Here is a frog who is... nnnnnnot
interested in sexually reproducing with that frog. Then we've got asexual
reproduction. More or less, that's without a partner. Simply put, that's just the cell
kinda splitting in half. Sometimes that's called binary fission. Next up, a
genetic code. Genetic code is information, a recipe for how we make an organism. In humans, the one you're
probably familiar with (that we'll go into later) is, of course, DNA. Now right here, we
have a tiny, tiny organism. This is an embryonic animal. Hopefully, you can guess it.
(The ears are kind of a giveaway.) It's a baby elephant. Well, how does it know
to grow up from that tiny, tiny, tiny cell into an elephant? Its DNA told it. This beautifully complex
molecule there is composed of only four letters: A, C, T and G. So think of it as like a
typewriter with only four different keys, but in it, we can make with all of the diversity that is life.
Growth and development. Now, growing just means you're increasing in size. imagine
just bigger baby children they would pretty weird their heads are huge
relative to their body address growing is getting better
however a lot of organisms and it's not necessary that the head shrunk its at
the rest of the body
kind of caught up with that so developed to differentiate it just needs to change
your shape or change your structure bacteria is very simple unicellular
organisms they grow humans however developed bacteria just get bigger and
divide humans change in Cincy just the train in an embryo it doesn't just get
bigger you can see how to differentiate in coming forward and swarming all those
different structures that are in your brain
she Regency from birth to adulthood how the proportions drastically change you
know as we go from fertilized a side note to blastocysts you can see it's not
just getting bigger taxes Giants fears were drastically changing in shape as we
get older we do the spot near the stage at this amazing time I and you can see
dogs aren't just very large properties of course they're full grown but this is
an animal that's not just getting bigger it's also changing shape changing sides
changing structure certain parts that are getting larger so growth and
development next up tribalism metabolism more or less is eating and pooping it's
using materials and energy but not gonna show you and images that shocking videos
are out there even plant metabolism plants used the sun's energy to make
sure we can process that we know as photosynthesis and of course it does
come out the other end showing a little bit but not too bad they never one of
those for many reasons
matched up response organisms detect and respond to stimuli from their
environment did reviews rabbits deer playing a game of cops stopped short of
a pastor everything but as that one approaches you can see this one response
to changes in its environment and you know it even plants to the STU plants
will grow toward the white you may have seen something like that where there's
even a little plant out there told the most aware when you touch the waves at
her close-up it's responding to a change in its and why it's alive that's a
characteristic device
Metro you can see in the dark very very large vertical
like what happens you bring it out into bright light and that pupil of course
transcripts it's responding to a change in its environment
homeostasis time of the weird one here by the name your price for this trade
means that the internal environment is in a state the same you and your
temperature oxygen in your co2 levels inside your body are roughly doing
remain the same despite the large changes in the outside environment your
internal memory is dinner they stay the same it gets hot outside
you still stay 98.6 degrees it gets cold outside
you would still stay 98.6 degrees pH oxygen all those as well they are going
to remain the same even though the outside environment going to change a
lot and finally evolution as a group living things change over time we're not
talking any one organism just a silly sprout wings but we're seeing it as a
group things change over time
a population of organisms well as individuals will not
so let's take a look at a couple examples here which characteristic is
this year we have a cat that sat down on a head shot which characteristic is dat
well that's definite response it's responding to a painful change in its
environment but the betrayed look on its face right now but this one here
well thats metabolism you know I'm not I'm not sure what's coming out on the
other hand but remember metabolism is eating and pooping taking in materials
and using them for energy so there we have it
characteristics of life