|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
 Posted: Mon Jan 18, 2010 6:51 pm
Hah! Imagine! The little blue boy he'd taught first upon arriving at D-Corp was returning to him as a teen. He could only hope he would not be so strange as his other teenage students. Today would be a lesson on cells because, hey, he'd already taught the boy all about his own animal!
|
 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Mon Jan 18, 2010 8:11 pm
"C'mon Kal or we'll be late!" The frog boy frowned at his rather pudgy green dragon, who was lazily following him down the hallway. He'd ignored the comments his mother had been making lately about Kalseru's weight gain. She wasn't fat! She was big boned and a growing dragon. Yeah, that was it.
Kalseru muttered something in draconic around the backpack she had clamped in her mouth. Nibal had remembered that this teacher wanted you to take notes. He was more for the hands-on type classes, but he didn't think biology could really be hands-on.
They finally reached the classroom and Nibal opened the door, walking in and holding the door open so Kal could make her way into the room. "Hey." He said in greeting, wincing a bit as Kalseru knocked a couple of the chairs over as she settled in at one of the tables. He followed, retrieving his bag from the green, who gave a sigh and curled up. Walking was hard work!
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Tue Jan 19, 2010 12:11 pm
Kaydon couldn't help but snicker when the tubby dragon entered the room. He made no move to fix the upset chairs, but he didn't seem angry either. They could be dealt with when class was over, after all!
"Hello~" he called, turning to the white board and drawing a basic cell, "It's nice to see you again, Nibal!" He moved to the dissection table then and attached the camera above it into the eyepiece of a microscope. He had to make the lesson as interesting as possible, or he'd feel like a bit of a failure.
"You may want to take notes for your own personal gain. You know I don't give out homework, but you may get a quiz the next time you come."
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Mon Feb 08, 2010 12:17 pm
Nibal opened the bag, pulling out his notebook and a pencil. The boy nodded, opening the notebook to a blank page and starting to copy the thing from the board onto the page. "What is that?" He asked as he did his best to copy the image.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Tue Feb 09, 2010 8:24 am
"A cell," Kaydon explained easily, "An animal cell, to be exact. The same kind that makes up you and me." He began to draw arrows and lines, preparing for his usual rapidfire lesson with the more interesting learning coming afterward.
"Now, we're going to move fast, so copy down what you can," he said, popping open a dry-erase marker, "Now, the outside of the cell is called he cell membrane. It's sort of...jelly-like." He wrote "cell membrane" on a line attached to an arrow pointing to the cell's outline, as he would now with every part he explained. He spoke slowly enough and with enough pause for Nibal to keep up and make whatever notes he felt he needed to make.
"The inside; the sort of...oozy goo that everything floats in is called the cytoplasm. Now this big circle here is the nucleus. It acts as the brain of the cell. It holds the cell's DNA and control the cell; its movement and its processes. It's a very complex thing. Inside the nucleolus, this smaller circle here, is the cell's DNA and RNA, which is like DNA but instead of the two strands with the bars between like you're used to seeing, it's just one strand. It's involved in protein synthesis and all other kinds of boring, complex things." Boring to a child, not to him.
"These little...beany things are the mitochondria. They're kind of the regulators of time. They control the cell's life, reproduction, and death cycles. They also supply the chemical energy the cell needs to function at all, like tiny nuclear power plants." He took pause to decide where to go next. Hrm.
"This...mass of squiggles, and yes, it really does look something like that, is the Golgi Body or the Golgi Apparatus. It packages up proteins to be brought where they need to be, whether that means going into the cell itself or being excreted outside of it. It's like the cell's digestive system, sort of."
"Now, when the mitochondria decide that it's time to make new cells, the cell membrane makes a bulb and pinches off, making a new little sack of cytoplasm and the proteins needed to form its other parts. It's a bit creepy, honestly, if you ask me."
He paused then to go to the microscope on the table and turn it and the monitor on. He applied a slide to the base as it booted up, and soon there was a mass of wriggling little cells in millions of times magnification making their way across the monitor.
"Now, without certain other parts, a cell won't be able to move at all. That's what this is for."
A cell sat more or less in one place, wriggling a bit and turning here and there. It was sort of brown with a prominent nucleus and there was a long string hanging off of its back end.
"Do you know what this is called?"
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Sun Feb 28, 2010 11:16 am
What came next was a flurry of scribbling and attempting to keep up with everything that Kaydon was saying. When the man paused to go to the microscope, Nibal kept writing, catching up to the rather quick and very informative lecture thus far. When he was asked a question, the frog boy finally looked up to see the cells moving about. How was he supposed to know what it was called? Nibal only knew what it looked like. "Uh... a tail?"
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Sun Feb 28, 2010 11:40 am
Kaydon laughed, but not in a condescending way. A tail? Well, yes, more or less, just a very special one.
"In a way," he finally said, nodding, "Some cells need it to move, you see. Kind of like a water snake, the 'tail' wriggles and the cell is propelled forward." He went to the board then and began to write something.
"I'm afraid it's called a flagellum, the plural being 'flagella'." That was what he had written, for Nibal to copy down.
"Scientific terms are not immune to utterly silly names."
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Sun Mar 14, 2010 8:45 pm
Nibal grinned as his teacher laughed. He was funny! And completely wrong. The frog boy made sure to note the proper name of the tail-like thing.
"What do other cells use to move then? Ones without these... flagellum things."
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Tue Mar 16, 2010 10:31 am
Kaydon snickered and smiled at Nibal. Finally, an interested student!
"Cilia," he said,writing that down on the board as well, "I'm not kidding about that one either. It's kind of like...little...cell-hair. Let me see if I can find one..." The teacher searched around the slide for a slower-moving type and within moments had found a cell with cilia eating...well. A dead cell. Better than nothing, at least!
"See?" he asked, pointing to the little protuberances all the way around the living cell, "It's like...legs, sort of. Lots and lots of jelly legs." He thought a moment, clasping his pointer in his hands.
"That's more or less it for unicellular organisms. Some of the simple-celled organisms walk like slugs, though. It's fairly disturbing."
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Reply
