Reflection: Excerpt from Bill Bryson's book about cells

 It's rather amusing how I considered this article to be a tedious activity, another assignment that I'd have to complete because...well, because its an assignment, when in reality; it turned out to be a whole lot more intriguing than I had expected. The topic is cells, and I don't mean any offense to Bill Bryson or any other scientists with an ambition for cell studies, but this isn't the most interesting topic. Yet this excerpt has given me a few surprising points that changed my idea of cells and arouse interacting questions of the topic in general.

 The feature that stands out from this article, are not the facts, but Bill Bryson's voice. His immensity of cell passion seems to be driving him to write in such thought provoking way.  It gives me a new look and a rather ironic idea of how the smallest unit of life, seems to be a motivational force for even the greatest minds. Another example would be Antoni van Leeuwenhock, who, as the article states "..tried to study the explosive properties of gunpowder.....nearly blinded himself in the process." This determination and conquest of cellular understanding  from scientists is appalling - as if it were the cell's way of revenge of being completely unappreciated and unacknowledged. 
Moving on to the factual features of the article, there were two main statements that stood out most. First, we lose approximately five hundred brain cells within an hour. If this is true, this calculates to a total of 12,000 brain cells in a day. This links to the idea that if you hold in a sneeze, you lose a few brain cells as well - whether this is a false statement or not, I'd think twice about holding in my sneeze from now on. The second fact: the egg is eighty five thousand times bigger than the sperm, not as much surprises me as it scares me. Of course from the egg a human form begins to take place so it should be expected the egg is larger, but the idea that the sperm - after traveling and becoming the first to reach the egg, is only a speck in comparison. The potential of the sperm astounds me because that one tiny gamete cell, is able to carry the information to a humungous egg cell where it triggers the formation of human life.


As I finished reading this excerpt, I was left with a few questions. Scientists often "estimate" or "approximate" numbers. But how exactly are estimations to do with cells made? For example, the article said that "It has been estimated that you lose five hundred of them an hour..", but was this estimation done through counting? Another question I found to be curious was how long it takes a cell to destroy itself once it receives the message to do so? Is it an immediate response or a slow one? Does the rate of this affect the organism in general? These were the main questions I had in relation to cellular research after I finished reading this article.