Calling MB or any other Science teachers please

[janeite]

DD2 has to make a model of a cell for her homework. She has had the bright idea of doing it as a cake, with icing representing the different sections. Would you be pleased/appalled or bewildered if one of your students did this? Clearly the teacher wouldn't be able to use it for display purposes!

Oh dear: do I have to tell her it's too mad an idea? This is the first thing she's been really, really enthused about since beginning Yr 7 this term.

Well - I like my model cells to be properly 3D. So with the nucleus inside and what have you. So if she's planning to ice a diagram of a cellon top of a cake I would have to say no. But I had a pupil make an edible 3D cell once and I thought it was fab. So it depends on her plan really.

Hmm... am a univ. bio lecturer, not secondary school, but personally i'd be ecstatic if any of mine showed that much effort/initiative/creativity.

make a jelly with a malteser in it!

though i'm not a science teacher just nosing in your thread

Would jelly be better?

OOOOHHHHH

I love this.

Don't do it as a cake. better to do the following.

Large seethrough platic bag
Wallpaper paste
Ping pong ball coloured black
Glitter
(for a plant cell only
a cardboard box to put the whole thing in,
Some green bits of paper)

Mix the paste, fill the bag. Bung everything in.

Bag = cell membrane
Ping pong ball+ nucleus
Paste = cytoplasm
glitter, chemical reactions happeneing in the cytoplasm

plants cells only green stuff= chloroplasts for photosynthesis

Box = cell wall

For extra brownie points she can explain that the plastic bag is impermiable, whereas the cell memebrane is partially permiable

This model also sloshes aroubf a bit, and the stuff inside a cell does move

I do see a lot of jelly!

3D part would be ok by me as long as cake was a semi-sphere with flat side as interior, iyswim

Well, yes. But I do like to see some indication that the organelles are also 3D IYSWIM.

Using fondant icing (is that what I mean - the thick stuff you can by ready made anyway) would be good. You could model with it. Embed it in the cake.

I would agree that if it's just iced on the top then it's not really a 3D model. I've had a child make a fab one out of jelly before with different bits in as the organelles and you can always take a photo of it for display purposes.

Thank you all!

Most of her friends are doing it as you describe MB and she wanted to do something different. They've been given pretty much free-rein and told it can be 2 or 3 dimensional. She wants to do a plant cell, she says.

How would differently coloured fairy cakes inside a clear plastic tub work do you think?

Tolalola - sorry, I am being dim; please can you explain your idea a bit more?

No cytoplasm.

She would also need a bag inside the box, as plant cells have both a cell membrane and a cell wall

Green cakes for chloroplasts etc? I see where she's going. But what about the cytoplasm?

Agh - sorry - please tell me more - but very slowly and in words of one syllable.

x post with MB. Gotta have the cytoplasm

The runny stuff! It is where lots of reactions take place inside a cell.

In actuall fact the cell is much more complex, mindblowingly, astonishingly so

look at this for an A level version

Blows my mind each time I watch it. Obviously a computer animation, but scientifically accurate, even the 'walking man'

ok, imagine an orange cut in half, resting on the rounded end. rounded (peel) part could be the cell wall/membrane. gooey icing on flat surface could be cytoplasm with 3D (marzipan?) organelles embedded.

Agh - ok - so maybe little bits of green cellophane around the fairy cakes? She's only Yr 7 and the teacher says she just wants the "main bits" as it were.

Please help me find a way to get this to work, as she is very excited about her idea!

Got to go out now but thanks for all the help so far and feel free to keep it coming!

If she wants it edible

Do it with Jelly.

Pour some in a large tupperware box and let it set.

Submerge some licorish for the nucleus....cluster it together. Angelica for the chloroplasts, and a pealed apple for the cebtral vacuole (hwo could I have fogotten that!)

Thanks. Angelica isn't edible; it's horrible!

Will tell her about the jelly.

One of my colleagues made pizza with her year 7 class the other week. An olive for the nucleus, etc.

Great - that would work too; the teacher said 2d would be fine.

peas for chloroplasts.

some ham for the large central vacuole

Thanks MB. Do you have a link to a fairly basic diagram please? There are so many in google and they all seem slightly different! I think the one they've seen at school must have been the "bare minimum bits" as it were.