Cheers for Spheres Lab
The Cheers for Spheres Lab was an experiment that further investigated the relationship between surface area and volume. As we learned in the previous lab, the larger the surface area-volume ratio is, the more efficiently materials can diffuse within the cell. So, the purpose of this lab was to figure out what exactly caused the surface area-volume ratio to increase or decrease. There were several sphere like objects, ranging from basketballs to tennis balls to boiling beads to actual cells. I had to measure the circumference of all these spheres, which would give me the radius, which then would find the surface area and the circumference using formulas in Microsoft excel. Since I was not the person who was working the excel sheet, I did not know the inputs into Microsoft excel, so that is why I got a question on the test wrong. It was found that the smaller the object was in terms of radius, surface area, and volume, the greater the surface-area volume ratio was. This revelation existed because of the structure of the equations: the surface area equation was quadratic, while the volume equation was cubic.
Go to http://www.brooklyn.cuny.edu/bc/ahp/LAD/C5/C5_ProbSize.html to learn more about the impact of surface area-volume ratios on cells.
Go to http://www.brooklyn.cuny.edu/bc/ahp/LAD/C5/C5_ProbSize.html to learn more about the impact of surface area-volume ratios on cells.