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Jen Bonczar, Marie Sager

Our initial hypothesis was that bigger organisms have bigger cells.

We observed five different types of cells, from all different sizes of organisms.

The smallest organism whose cells we observed was the buttercup root. The smallest sized cell was 20 microns in diameter, the largest was 50 microns in diameter, and the average was 35 microns in diamater.

The next largest organism was the pine stem. Results for the cells of this organism were approximately the same as the buttercup root, with cells being about 35 microns in diameter.

The Coleus plant, our next largest organism, had many different cell sizes. The sizes of the cells ranged from 25 square microns all the way to 1500 square microns.

Pig cells were approximately 7.2 microns in diameter.

Finally, we scratched some cells from the inside of Marie's cheek and colored them with a blue dye. We observed two specimens, one of which was about 50 microns in diameter with the second being 70 microns in diameter.

Currently, the observations allow us to construct the story that cell size is independent of organism size except for in the case of single cell organsims. This disproves our intial hypothesis. The pig cells we observed were much smaller than those of the buttercup root, yet a pig is much much larger than a buttercup root (pigs eat buttercups for breakfast). Also, organisms had many different sizes of cells, as is demonstrated in our observations of the buttercup root, pine stem, and coleus plant.


We also have a secondary hypothesis that bigger organisms have more cells, but this is an untestable hypothesis as we do not have whole organisms; thus we did not dwell on it in our observations. Still, it seems logical that bigger organisms would have more cells than larger ones simply because a larger organism has more volume of matter.