You are here: Home / Resources / Teaching Materials / Sizes of Organisms: The Surface Area to Volume Ratio / Description
Resource Image

Sizes of Organisms: The Surface Area to Volume Ratio

Author(s): Lou Gross1, Monica Beals1, Susan Harrell1

University of Tennessee Knoxville

1412 total view(s), 344 download(s)

0 comment(s) (Post a comment)

Download

Adapt 0
Summary:
This module introduces surface area-volume ratio in the context of understanding the limits or constraints on organism size. It is intended for an introductory biology audience.

Licensed under CC Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International according to these terms

Version 1.0 - published on 15 Feb 2019 doi:10.25334/Q44J03 - cite this

Keywords

  1. Ratios
  2. structure
  3. Surface Area
  4. biomechanics
  5. Geometry
  6. Functions
  7. Volume
  8. OpenStax

Alignments

  1. Resource Type
  2. Audience Level
  3. Activity Length
Contents:
view all files

Description

This activity maps to the OpenStax biology textbook, 30.6 Plant Sensory Systems and Responses

Student Introduction: Two- and three-dimensional parameters of organisms (i.e., surface area and volume) do not necessarily increase or decrease proportionally to increases or decreases in one-dimensional, or linear, parameters (i.e., length). For example, the greater the diameter of a single-celled organism, the less surface area it has relative to its volume. The surface area to volume ratio is a way of expressing the relationship between these parameters as an organism's size changes.

Cite this work

Researchers should cite this work as follows:

Close

Home

Search