Aircraft-Related Schoolwork Help Request

[kyokoyama]

As much as this topic might be better suited in a community centered in biology more than here, I thought that this is probably the only place I could get help in for a school assignment I am working on.
With that said, the work which I need to do is to create an analogy between the functions and organelles of an eukaryotic (nucleus-present) cell, and any man-made organization or system.

After much thought, I was only able to come up with two plausible analogies, which refers to aircrafts and computers. (A factory was what I would have used, but it is not allowed to be used in this assignment)

For the aircraft analogy, I am using the fuselage as the cell membrane, the passengers as the cytoplasm, the cockpit system in general as the nucleus, the pilots and copilots as the nucleolus, the system converting the jet fuel into electric energy as the mitochondria, the lavatories as the lysosomes, the Fly-By Wire systems on modern commercial aircraft as the Rough Endoplasmic Reticulum, the air pressure/climate control for the Smooth E.R., the processing computers in the aircraft wiring for the Golgi Apparatus, and the airframe (overall) for the cytoskeleton. (I have no idea what to use as peroxisomes for this, which is another thing I need help on.)

As for the computer analogy, I am using the tower casing as the cell membrane, the motherboard as the cytoplasm, the CPU as the nucleus, the Arithmatic Logic Unit in the CPU as the nucleolus, the power supply as the mitochondria, the CPU fan (that can somehow blow off the dust entering the tower) as the lysosomes, imput devices (mouse, keyboard, joystick etc.) as the Rough Endoplasmic Reticulum, either the wiring in the circuit boards or extensions like graphic or video cards for the Smooth E.R. (need help choosing here too, please?), the surge protector for peroxisomes, the RAM for the Golgi Apparatus, and the glass board that serves as the basis for the motherboard for the cytoskeleton.

What I would like to ask of you all is to see if the parts I specified really do match up to the organelles.
I realize that this is a really hard topic, and many of you may not remember about cell functions from high school, so this may be really hard to do. So I apologize for that, as well as if this topic is not really fitting for FlightGear.

Anyways, any help in this is greatly appreciated, especially if it is made by 2:00AM of Friday, December 10, 2010 Eastern Time (7:00A UTC)
Thank you so much, beforehand!

PS: This is a part of the rubric for the project, which also has the explanations of the functions of the cell parts named here:

[nickyivyca]

I did one of these types of projects before, and I used a factory. To me the airplane ones seem much more fitting because an airplane is mostly internal, compared to a computer which has a bunch of random stuff going off of it.

Some of the suggestions I would have:
-IMO, the mitochondria could be the engines themselves. They take the fuel (food) and change it into thrust (energy), even producing partially CO2 in the exhaust.
-Vacuoles could be fuel tanks.
-Ribosomes could be flight attendants (why are these and vacuoles not on the list?)
-Peroxisomes could be the air filters in the pressurization system.

Other than that, I guess they could match up, but you might want to use aircraft parts more familiar with the general public.

[kyokoyama]

Thanks for your input.

The peroxisomes, vacuole and mitochondria, I think could work like that perfectly!
As for the ribosomes and vacuole, I have no idea why it was not mentioned in the paper. (It wasn't on the parts of that paper which I did not show, either...)

However, I think the Rough ER and the ribosomes have to use the same "protein". This is why I had to get technical for the Rough ER, Golgi Apparatus etc., because they all had to deal with the same material. Do you think there's a way that you can compare a ribosome, Rough ER., and the Golgi Apparatus in this condition?

(Again, thanks for your advice, Nickyivyca -it helped a lot!)

[nickyivyca]

However, I think the Rough ER and the ribosomes have to use the same "protein". This is why I had to get technical for the Rough ER, Golgi Apparatus etc., because they all had to deal with the same material. Do you think there's a way that you can compare a ribosome, Rough ER., and the Golgi Apparatus in this condition?

Well, if the cabin air instead was the cytoplasm, the passengers could be the "proteins", rough ER and golgi body could be some sort of thing with the aisles and seats.

[kyokoyama]

So, applying what you said, the air is the cytoplasm, the people are proteins, the aisles can be the ER and the individual chairs are Golgi Apparatuses?

[nickyivyca]

So, applying what you said, the air is the cytoplasm, the people are proteins, the aisles can be the ER and the individual chairs are Golgi Apparatuses?

That could work, I guess.

[kyokoyama]

Alright, then. Thanks a lot, again!

(If you're wondering why I'm still up, it's because I had more stuff to do... and I still have an hour left of HW! )

[timjschong]

Perhaps the hard drive of the computer would be more fitting as the nucleus. After all, the nucleus contains the DNA.

[Armchair Ace]

(If you're wondering why I'm still up, it's because I had more stuff to do... and I still have an hour left of HW! )

Strange - I was in almost the same situation. In my case the cause of my misery was a GCSE Maths Practice Paper - sadism on paper!

~Tom

[SteveSeidel]

Hi, is your project available in a free access on Prezi? I'm planning to give my students a task on cell analogy: how many similarities can an essay have illustrated via the prism of analogies where students can choose either airplane, airport or starship enterprise. I've taken my lesson plan from Westland Middle School, but I need to have 3-4 valid examples of students' projects (preferably on Prezi).

[SteveSeidel]

Btw, there's much information shared by Jim Sullivan on CELLSalive too.

[Johan G]

Hi, is your project available in a free access on Prezi? [...] I've taken my lesson plan from Westland Middle School, but I need to have 3-4 valid examples of students' projects (preferably on Prezi).

Considering that this topic is old enough that Prezi was founded just the year before, I unfortunately doubt it.


Somehow I was not aware of Prezi at all. My take from having a quick look around is that it instead of being a set of slides one maybe can skip back and forth trough, it is more of an interactive zoomable mindmap that one can take the audience on a journey through, or if interest or time is less abundant, allows for focusing on just the parts that the audience is more interested in. The flip side is that it seems to be closed source and cloud based, in essence no local storage.

I found this YouTube video really interesting: The Prezenter (8 October 2015), Intro to Prezi (20 min).

Tl;dr: Though there are both pros and cons Prezi seem like a really neat way to do presentations.