List three reasons why cells must be small?

Answer 1

1. Cells are small to keep the surface area to volume ratio high. This will allow for efficient transport of nutrients into - and wastes out of - the cell.

2. The small size of cells enables rapid communication between cells. Such communication may be in the form of electrical or chemical signals.

3. A small cell can replicate faster than a large one. Replicating to repair damaged cells is essential to an organism's survival.

Answer 2

If we were four times our size then our cells could be four times their size and everything inside the cell would four times their size. There just needs to be enough cells to make the organs in the organism big enough to deal with other cells in the organism, in other words all cells have to be about within the same size. There is no reason for cells to be small.

Answer 3

One reason is that cells are primarily kept alive by diffusion and osmosis. Both of these processes would take forever if carried out over a large surface area. A smaller surface area allows for faster diffusion.

Answer 4

When I was studying cellular biology years ago, the teacher had a really great visual aid for this:

He had 4 small sponges, each with a volume about twice that of the previous one. He put the sponges in a beaker of colored water and waited about one minute, then took them out and cut them in half. You could see immediately how far the colored water had penetrated into the sponge... the smallest sponge was completely saturated and the largest sponge only had colored water in the most outter part of the sponge.

Try the experiment and you will never wonder about how cells work again... guaranteed.

Answer 5

Cells must be small

(1) to preserve an optimal surface area : volume ratio with the environment. The bigger the cells are, the harder it is to maintain homeostasis. [Energy Efficiency]

(2) to permit multiple copies (thousands - hundreds of thousands) of themselves within the allotted space [Safety in Numbers - or "flocking" in a swarm]

AAAAAND (3)
So they can fit under our microscopes! :)

Answer 6

How do we know if they are small...They could be whatever size we wanted to call them but it would make no difference....the question is: Why are cells Smaller than everything else?

Answer 7

1)To distribute the duties in order to make everything faster.That 's similar to people in society.It will be more efficient if everyone just takes a little part of the goal.
2)It will be easier when a part is hurt to make the injury get fixed as soon as possible.
3)To make things more complicated for humans,HAVING STH FOR SEARCH.

Answer 8

1-to pass from small blood vessles (capillaries)
2-to exchange food from blood cells to every cell of body
3-to exchange oxygen and carbondioxide from blood to cells
and many other reasons

Answer 9

1. because smaller cells mean more cells
2. more cells mean more prisoners
3. more prisoners in jail mean more off the street

wrong kinda cells eh?

Answer 10

there are so many of them
tyranny of mathematics
Shorter is faster. This is true both in terms of diffusion and in terms of chemical and electrical movement.