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Kaitlin Cough and Elizabeth Harnett

Before we started looking at the different organisms under the microscope, our hypothesis was "providing that the cells are the same size, the bigger the organism the more cells it will have." We believed that the cells would be the same size for the different organisms and there would be a direct relationship between the size of the organism and the number of cells. We observed seven different organisms: a buttercup, shark brain, pine stem, spirogyra, coleus stem tip, jejunum and Elizabeth's cheek cell.

Needless to say we quickly disproved our hypothesis. After looking at our first organism we realized that there were many different cells and were variable in size and color. There was no correlation between the size of the cell and the size of the organism. Below are our measurements for each of the organisms:

Buttercup: had two different types of cells, the outside blue cells (ground cells) were an average of 50 microns and the middle pink cells (vascular cells) ranged from 5.2 to 23.4 microns.

Shark Brain: all relatively the same size, purple in color, 2.6-5.2 microns on average.

Pine Stem: 4 different types of cells, the middle pink cells were 52 microns on average, smaller pink cells that were 10 microns, green outer edge cells were 38.2 microns on average and the small green cells were 7.8 microns on average.

Spirogyra: Small blue cells, 10.4 microns on average.

Coleus Stem Tip: Green cells with purple nuclei, 7.8-20.8 microns.

Jejunum: Pink cells, 2.6 microns

Cheek Cell: Blue cells, 2.6 microns.

After reviewing our observations the plant cells seem to be much larger than the animal cells. The animal cells are all about the same size: 2.6 microns.