Sunday, December 4, 2011

Cells

    Cells are the basic functional units in organisms. There are multicellular organisms, organisms who contain many cells. There are also unicellular organisms, organisms contained only one cell. An example of a multicellular organism is a human. An example of a unicellular organism is Amoeba.
   There are two types of cells: prokaryotic and eukaryotic. Prokaryotic cells are more smaller than eukaryotic cells and lacking of a nucleus and other organelles of eukaryotes. There are two types of prokaryotes that share similar structures: bacteria and archaea. Eukaryotic cells are way larger and complex than prokaryotic cells. A big difference between them is that eukaryotic cells contain membrane-bound compartments. Examples of complex organisms that are eukaryotes are animals, plants and fungi. The cell divison is different from prokaryotes since prokaryotes don't contain a nucleus. Cells are the building blocks of life.

Osmosis

     Osmosis is the movement of solvent molecules through a selectively permeable membrane into regions of high concentration to regions of low concentration. Diffusion is the spread of particles through random motion from regions of high concentration to regions to low concentration. The difference between them  is that osmsosis is the diffusion of water only, throught passive transport and diffusion is the transport of varies substances by the means of passive or active transport. In diffusion and osmosis any passive transport can happen without energy since they don't need ATP. A concentration gradient is when there's an uneven distribution of a substance across a border. An exmaple: If we picture each individual molecule as a little blue dot and there's a thousand of them. On one side there is 850 little blue dots and the other side is 150, the sides  aren't even. Solute & Solvent have to do with Osmosis and Diffusion because osmosis is the diffusion of solvent through a permeable membrane. Water is not always a solvent  because not all things dissolve in water.