BIOlecturequestions - Lecture 1 What is Life Questions you...

Lecture 1: What is Life?
Questions you should be able to answer after today’s lecture.
1. Where can you find Cornell’s Code of Academic Integrity?
2. What is the difference between the vitalist’s view of life and the materialist’s view
of life?
 Vitalist’s believe the soul is responsible for life. Materialist’s believe that life is based
on chemistry and physics and emergent properties.
3. What is the materialist’s definition of an emergent property?
 Interaction of component parts acting together (eg. Atoms)
4. What is the operational definition of life?
 Takes small molecules and makes them into large organic molecules needed for
growth. Moves by internal forces, generates electrical energy, transforms one energy to
another usually by burning an reproduces with near perfect fidelity.
5. Why is the cell the basic unit of life?
 The cell is the basic unit of life because it is the smallest unit capable of expressing the
fundamental characteristics of life.
Lecture 2: What is Science?
Questions you should be able to answer after today’s lecture.
1. How are new scientific ideas discovered?
 By accident, chance, luck, intuition, etc.
2. How did Oskar Minkowski discover the pancreas was necessary to prevent
diabetes?
 He wanted to prove that enzymes secreted by the pancreas had nothing to do with the
breakdown of fatty acids and so when he performed a pancreatomy on a dog, he urinated
everywhere and flies swarmed around the urine resulting in the observation that there was
a sugary flow in the dogs urine once the pancreas was removed.
3. How did Alexander Fleming discover Penicillin?
 Left a culture of Staphlococus out for the weekend and when he came back the plant
penicillium had developed and the bacteria around it had lysed.
4. How did Walter Cannon discover the relationship between strong emotions and
the digestive process?
 He was doing an experiment to look at stomach movements of cats, and the males were
always restless so he couldn’t use them so he used the females. When the cats were calm
their stomach moved but when their kittens were threatened and the cats became restless

their stomachs stopped to start the analysis of the fight or flight response along with the
rest and digest response.
5. What is the Fermi solution?
 A way to come to an accurate conclusion about a very general question and maximize
assumptions.
6. How did William Harvey discover that the blood circulates?
 he used to Fermi solution to make assumptions based on knowledge. He knew that the
heart was a muscle and pumped and when it did pump the liver couldn’t refill the heart
with enough blood. Although, he didn’t know exactly where the blood was going since he
didn’t ave a microscope. The liver would need to produce 7000 litres of blood a day
7. Should there be limits to scientific curiosity? Should the public participate in
setting the limits? Discuss this in terms of the poliovirus.