Elodea leaf cells

This is a microscopic view of an elodea leaf at 400 power.  Elodea is an aquatic plant found in lakes and fish ponds.  The rectangular lines in the picture are the cell walls outlining the individual cells in the leaf.  The cells are living things.  They exhibit the seven characteristics of life that we have studied.  Each individual cell is not an organism, however, because each cell is not independent: each cell relies on the other cells in the plant to stay alive.  The elodea plant is an organism, the individual cells of the elodea are not organisms.

If no image appears above, click to see elodea video in Windows Media player

 
The small, green oval-shaped parts of the leaf are chloroplasts.  The chloroplasts float in the cytoplasm, which is the clear fluid found in all cells.  The movement that we see is called cytoplasmic streaming.  To the left is a video we made in class using a sample from one of the students and our electronic microscope.

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Click here to see a video of paramecia and other microscopic organisms

Click here to see human cheek cells.

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