Fun Facts & Links for Further Exploration
  • The human body contains over 200 different types of specialised cells.  
    They vary enormously in size and shape, from nerve cells whose
    filaments can stretch over a metre, to tiny, disc-shaped red blood cells.  
    On average, though, a human cell is about two-hundredths (2/100) of a
    millimetre.  That’s too small to be seen with the naked eye but roomy
    enough to hold thousands of complicated structures.

  • Humans start with the meeting of a sperm cell and an egg cell.  They
    combine then the new cell splits to become two, then the two become
    four and so on.  After just 47 doublings you have 10,000 trillion
    (10,000,000,000,000,000) cells in your body and are ready to spring forth
    as a human being.

  • Your body's cells are a country of 10,000 trillion citizens, and there isn’t a
    thing they won’t do for you.  They let you feel pleasure and form
    thoughts.  They enable you to stand and stretch and run.  When you eat,
    they extract the nutrients, distribute the energy, and carry off the wastes,
    but they also remember to make you hungry in the first place.  They keep
    your hair growing, your ears waxed, your heart pumping, and your brain
    working.  

  • The membrane is not a durable or rubbery casing as most of us would
    imagine it, but is made up of a type of fatty material known as a lipid,
    which has the approximate consistency of machine oil.

  • If you were to increase the size of a cell to a scale at which atoms were
    about the size of peas, a cell itself would be about a kilometre across,
    and supported by a complex framework of girders called the
    cytoskeleton.  Within the cell, millions and millions of objects, some the
    size of basketballs and others the size of cars, would whiz around like
    bullets.  There wouldn’t be a place you could stand without being
    pummelled and ripped thousands of times every second from every
    direction.
Links for Further Learning
Ken's Biology Link Site - your biology "one stop shop"

Cell Theory

The Virtual Cell

The Cell: A Virtual Tour

Cells Alive - try the "How Big?" section or "Take a Quiz"

The Biology Project: Cell Biology

Interactive 3D Cells and Movies

Cellular Organelles

Animation Showing Cell Organelles - Organelle labels are
in French, but luckily they're not much different from their
English names. (5.36 MB)   Movie from: www-chimie.u-strasbg.fr/membres/lcmes/fichiers/
Congratulations, you have now completed
this Cellular Webquest!  Well done!
Please feel free to contact either Nick Moss or Greg Tompos
with any feedback or questions regarding this Webquest.
from: www.animations.com
University of Canberra
IT and Education

Nick Moss &
Greg Tompos

October 2005
Factual information contained on this page:
Bryson, B. (2003). A Short History of Nearly Everything, Black Swan.