Unit 3 Review Exercise
Complete the following exercises, writing as clearly and legibly as possible.
Exercise 1: Why are cells small?
To understand this, we first have to understand surface area to volume ratios. Let's start with surface area.
Imagine a box of sugar cubes. The surface area of the cube is calculated by finding the area (length x width) of one side. But we want to know the whole surface. On a cube, there are 6 sides, so we multiply that area by 6. So, the surface area of a cube is length x width x 6.
Volume is another simple calculation. We just multiply length x width x height. Calculate the volume for each of the diagrams below. The one we are most interested in, though, is the surface area to volume ratio, which is just surface area divided by volume.
Complete the calculations in the table below for each diagram.
1 UNIT OR CM
UNITS
UNITS
UNITS
Figure
Total Number of Cubes
Surface Area (L x W x 6)
Volume (L x W x H)
Surface Area to Volume Ratio (SA/V)
Total Surface of Individual Cubes (6 x D cubes)
What happened to the surface area as the size increased? What happened to the volume as the size increased? What happened to the surface area to volume ratio as the size increased? Now imagine you're looking at a very large cell next to a very small cell. Which one has a larger surface area to volume ratio?