Lena's Biology

Your exam

How to use this

One section a day: read the Know this card, then do every game in that section until you get 100%. Finish with Cards (5 minutes) and, from the day before the exam, Exam mode until you score 18 or more out of 20.

How to get a top score

• Use the book's words. "Excreting", not "peeing". "Imago", not "grown-up butterfly". The test rewards the exact terms.
• Explain questions want a reason. Always write "because…". Example: "A wooden plank is dead because it was once part of a living tree; its life processes have stopped."
• Growth = bigger and heavier. Development = new parts or a new shape. If something appears (teeth, fur, roots, flowers, legs), it is development.
• Dead vs non-living: ask "was it ever alive?" Yes → dead. Never → non-living.
• Lifecycles: be able to write the stages in order from memory: tomato (9 steps), cabbage white (4 stages), frog (8 steps).

Basics 1 · Organisms

Know this

Biology = the study of life (Greek bios = life, logos = study). An organism is a living creature: humans, animals, plants, bacteria and fungi are all organisms. A stone is not.

All organisms have life processes. The life processes tell you whether something is living. There are seven:

Living, dead, non-living

• Living: the life processes are happening (heron, dragonfly, grass, farmer).
• Dead: it was alive, but the life processes have stopped (fallen tree, skull, dead fish, mown grass, a wooden plank).
• Non-living: it was never alive (rocks, air, water, a tractor, a cola can, an iron gate).

Non-living things still matter for living things: water, air and sunlight have a huge influence on living nature.

Life process groups

Which of the three groups does each life process belong to? 14 questions.

Which life process?

Read the situation, pick the life process. Some have two answers: tap both, then Check. 15 questions.

Living, dead or non-living?

The question to ask yourself: was it ever alive? 16 items, some from the picture in Know this.

Explain it

These are the kind of open questions that come up on the test. Say the answer out loud, then tap the card to compare with the model answer.

Basics 2 · Growth and development

Know this

Growth = an organism gets larger and heavier. Development = changes in the structure (shape) of an organism: new parts appear, such as stems, leaves, teeth, fur. Development lets the parts work better (roots that branch off absorb water better).

A seed (brown bean)

Germination starts when the seed absorbs water. The embryo grows into a seedling, using the nutrients from the seed leaves. Water is what a seed needs to start; without water a seed can stay in the soil for centuries (ancient seeds).

Lifecycle of a tomato plant (9 steps)

1. A tomato pip is a seed.
2. The seed absorbs water through the pore (micropyle). It swells up and the seed coat breaks open.
3. The root comes out of the seed.
4. The root grows down into the soil; the seed leaves appear above the ground.
5. The seedling grows, using nutrients from the seed leaves.
6. The seedling grows bigger and gets more leaves. The seed leaves disappear.
7. A mature tomato plant has grown.
8. Flowers appear; fruits (tomatoes) containing seeds are produced from the flowers.
9. The pips are the tomato's seeds. The cycle starts again.

Three stages: germination (steps 2–3), seedling (4–6), mature plant (7–9). A lifecycle is a process that keeps repeating: the end of one cycle is the start of the next.

Animals grow and develop too: inside a penguin egg a lot of development happens; the chick already has the body structure of an adult, then mostly grows (bigger and heavier).

Growth or development?

Bigger/heavier = growth. New part or new shape = development. 18 statements.

Parts of a seed

Name the part from its description or its number in the diagram. 14 questions.

Tomato lifecycle

Tap the steps in the right order, starting with the seed. A wrong tap counts as a mistake; aim for zero.

Which stage?

Germination, seedling or mature plant? 10 questions.

Explain it

Open questions from the Insight exercises and the two texts (Ancient seeds, Plants are urbanising). Answer out loud, then tap to compare.

Basics 3 · Metamorphosis

Know this

In some animals the young look nothing like the adults. A larva comes out of the egg; it looks different from the adult and often eats different food. Before it becomes an adult it undergoes a transformation: metamorphosis. During metamorphosis the animal's body structure and its way of life change.

Cabbage white (butterfly): 4 stages

Beetles (ladybird), bees, flies and wasps have the same four stages.

Common frog: 8 steps

1. Adult frogs mate.
2. Frogspawn: eggs stuck together in a clump of up to 3000.
3. A newly hatched tadpole (about 6 mm) with external gills on its head.
4. Tadpole with internal gills.
5. Metamorphosis starts: the tadpole grows back legs.
6. Front legs grow (after 8–9 weeks); the tail becomes smaller.
7. The gills have disappeared; lungs have developed inside the body.
8. The tail has disappeared; it is an adult frog (about 15 mm after 12–13 weeks).

A tadpole eats mostly algae and gets oxygen from the water through its gills and skin. An adult frog eats insects and gets oxygen from the air through its lungs and skin. Lungs are why a frog can live on land.

Head lice: no real metamorphosis

Egg = nit → after 6–7 days a nymph crawls out → adult (imago). A nymph is not a larva: it already looks like an adult louse. Nymphs do not pupate; they shed their skin about three times in ten days and grow after each shedding. Lice live off blood.

Butterfly stages

Egg, larva, pupa or imago? 16 questions.

Frog lifecycle

Tap the 8 steps in order, then do the same for the butterfly and the head louse.

Frog & louse facts

The numbers and details the test likes. 16 questions.

Explain it

The Insight questions: caterpillar growth graph, tadpole tail, "itching like nits", why a child is not a larva.

Basics 4 · Humans

Know this

As you grow and develop, your body changes. Things go especially quickly between ages 12 and 16: puberty.

Three types of development

Growth of a girl (fig. 1, redrawn)

Two growth spurts: in the first year (0–1) and in puberty (12–16, about two years). Between 12 and 16 the body shape also changes (physical development); after 16 a girl hardly grows any more.

Stages of life: eight phases

The stages do not last equally long in all people: some children develop quickly, others more slowly. The ages are average ages.

Average heights of boys and girls (fig. 3, redrawn)

Girls are taller than boys on average between about 8½ and 14, because their puberty growth spurt starts earlier. Boys start later but grow more, so eventually boys are taller.

The head changes shape (fig. 5)

Internet and development

Positive for mental development: learning to network, taking part in discussions, making video clips, reading articles, sharing knowledge, improving languages. Negative for mental development: exposure to violence, online bullying, sexual abuse, misuse of personal data (webcam images), accepting ideas uncritically as the truth. Negative for motor development: no exercise during long periods online; also a higher risk of diabetes and cardiovascular disease.

Which development?

Physical, mental or motor? 18 questions.

Which stage of life?

From an age or from something a person learns or does. 20 questions.

Stages in order

Tap the eight stages from birth to old age, then do the ages.

Read the graph

Questions about fig. 3 (boys and girls) and fig. 1 (growth of a girl). The graphs are in Know this. 10 questions.

Explain it

Growth spurts, the graph, the head, Harry, and the Internet text.

Basics 5 · Making food

Know this

Plants make food for all other organisms on Earth. They do not eat other organisms themselves.

Substances and energy

Humans and animals need oxygen (from the air you breathe in), nutrients (substances your body needs to grow and develop; they come from food) and energy (also from food). Almost all food comes from plants or animals. Plants do not feed on other organisms: they make the substances they are made of themselves.

Glucose

Glucose is a kind of sugar that contains a lot of energy. The plant uses it to make all sorts of other high-energy substances, including the substances the plant itself is made of, so it can grow and make new parts (leaves, stems, fruits, seeds).

To make glucose the plant needs three things: water (from the ground, through the roots), carbon dioxide (a gas, from the air, through small openings in the leaves) and energy from light (for example the sun).

Photosynthesis

water + carbon dioxide + energy from light → glucose + oxygen

Photosynthesis = the process where a plant makes glucose using energy from light. It happens in all green parts of a plant, especially the leaves. It also releases oxygen through the same small openings in the leaves.

Why photosynthesis is important

• Food: almost everything people eat ultimately comes from plants. Meat comes from a cow, but the cow ate grass. An egg comes from a chicken, but the chicken ate maize.
• Oxygen: photosynthesis keeps renewing the oxygen in the air. Without it, the oxygen would slowly all get used up.

Edible parts of plants

Photosynthesis

What goes in, what comes out, where it happens and why it matters. 16 questions.

Word web

The summary exercise from the book (fig. 3): fill the ten boxes with the ten words. Tap a box, then tap a word.

Which part do we eat?

Fruit, seed, root, stem, leaf or flower? 20 vegetables.

Explain it

Cloudy days, lamps at night, water plants, solar energy, the tomato grower.

Flashcards

All the key terms from sections 1–3. Read the term, say the meaning, tap to check. Terms you didn't know come back at the end.

Exam mode

20 random questions from all sections, no hints. Goal: 18 or more. Do it until you hit the goal twice in a row.