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We started with the hypothesis that bigger organisms do not necessarily have bigger cells, but instead, have a larger number of cells, that differ in shape and structure.
To acquire further information to prove/disprove our hypothesis, we decided to study the slides of the uterine lining of a human, the cross section of an earthworm and the jejunum of a pig.
The uterine lining of a human initially was a convoluted mess, at 4x. On magnifying further at 40x, we found it consisted of many, many elongated cells cluttered together, with only the nucleus of each cell visible in the form of a dark, round spot. We estimated the size of each cell to be between 3-5units, or between 7.5-12.5 u.
The earthworm‘s slide was actually a very, very interesting find: we found THREE different kinds of cells! The outermost cells were made conspicuous by a clutter of black dots, placed very close to one another. These cells were far too small for us to be able to measure them. The layer beneath this layer comprised of much larger, spaced-out, elongated, bubble-like cells (that resembled cheek cells a LOT) with very visible dark spots (nuclei) towards their boundaries. These cells varied from 5-10 units, or 12.5-25 u. The third category of cells was placed further below the second, bubble-type cells. These were horizontally elongated and had thin, hair-like structures jutting out. The nuclei of these cells weren’t visible very clearly.
Finally, the cells from the jejunum of the pig were similar to those from the uterine lining. They were initially wound up in a convoluted coil, which, on further magnification, revealed many tiny blackish dots, which we assumed to be the nuclei. We couldn’t see the individual boundary of these cells very clearly. The size of these cells varied between 2-4 units, or 5-10u.
We thus saw, that even though a pig is bigger than an earthworm, the size of its cells is smaller than that of the earthworm. Hence, we concluded that there is no correlation between the size of an organism and the size of its cells. We also understood that the shape, structure and size of cells in an organism differ according to their location of the cell and the function they’re expected to perform, as seen in the case of the earthworm.