Can anyone tell me why a car would be considered a living thing?

Question

My Bio. teacher asked me this question and I never got it and now i'm curious to know what the answer is!

Answer 1

Try these:
It needs to consume chemical fuel in order to move.
It requires intake of fresh, clean air to sustain the chemical reactions required to move.
It does produce exhaust.
It has an electrical system which controls and regulates precise timing vital to movement.
It has a variety of several specific fluids which do different jobs within it to keep it running smoothly.
It has a unique identification number which is registered with a local government.
When it makes strange noises or unexpected motions it may not be well.

Answer 2

Nothing is dead. Everything is living. Everything is made up of atoms and space, including us! The car is the same. The difference is the vibration rate. That's probably why your teacher ask this question. S/he is talking about "quantum physics".

I am not an expert but this is how I understand it.

The entire Universe, including humans and cars, are made up of space and atoms. The slower the vibration rate of atoms, the less "alive" it seems. So things like cars (metal), rocks, dead decomposing materials (leaves, wood, etc.), water seem like "dead" ... but they are changing and transforming at a much slower rate than like our cells, which vibrate a little faster.

The faster the vibration rate, the fast the changes ... e.g. our aging process because the cells that make up a human vibrate at a certain rate, so we change as our cells change.

Thoughts vibrate faster than our cells, that's why we can change our minds so quickly. But things that you can touch and feel, like cars or our body, change slower. So let's say if we have an idea to go and eat ice cream, the idea comes quickly but to actually dress and get to an ice cream store, buy the ice cream and eat it, takes longer.

The car is made up of metal and stuff that has a slower vibratory rate, thus we don't see it as alive. It does "age" or change over time...it can get rusty, clogged up with gunk and need to exercise (get driven) to stay fit. If you don't drive a car for weeks, it takes longer to warm up. Not unlike the human body.

Answer 3

There is a consideration of a concept that includes in the general definition of life all that is including inanimate objects such as material manifestations. For example there are some who meditate the air to be brain matter none-the-less so than anything else. Carl Sagan wrote that what neurons and dendrites are for the physical body, trees and brush and grass and rivers and even mountains might be the neurons and dendrites of our mental matter...
And then there is Gaia... earth to some, a true living part of a living being that includes us as part of that living matter... perhaps the thinking part.

Answer 4

You got some good answers.

I just wanted to point out that your teacher isn't dumb, or smoking illegal substances, or any such thing.

What he's (probably) trying to do is to get you to think. This question requires taking the concept of 'living thing' and apply it to something that you've never thought of applying it to before.

I think it's a brilliant question, pedagogically speaking. Requiring students to think deeply about a basic concept, and see how it does (and doesn't) apply is exactly what should be going on in schools all the time.

(see my Yahoo 360 blog entries on education)

Answer 5

It depends on what your definition of "living" is.

Most definitions have a list of qualities that the thing must meet to be "alive" Usually this includes consuming nutrition, eliminating waste, and reproduction. A car does the first two, taking in gasoline and emiting exhaust fumes. But I don't think that a car can be seen as reproducing, unless you include car factories with the car being like the ant drone to the factories hive queen.

Answer 6

I baby my truck , i talk to it from time to time, and i wash it often even down to cleaning under the hood, i have a name for it and when i am mad or sad i will go get in my truck and just drive.. when you work really hard for something you take care of it, even to the point as to where you think of it as a counterpart.. now why your biology teacher asked this question i dont know... its more a personal opinion with people and how much they love there cars.

Answer 7

I cant see why it would be considered a living thing, only a non-living thing (ie. its inorganic, has no state of conciousness, is unable to reproduce etc. However... I suppose it depends how you (yourself) define "life" as there is no absolute defenition of it. If you consider using up resources to prolong ones existence, the ability to move, consume, provide an energy or function, then your defenition of life includes that of the likes of, say, cars.
According to physicists such as John Bernal, Erwin Schrödinger, Wigner, and John Avery, "life" is a member of the class of phenomena which are open or continuous systems able to decrease their internal entropy at the expense of substances or free energy taken in from the environment and subsequently rejected in a degraded form.
I thought the theory of living things have to be organic was pretty watertight, ...then I happened upon a little film called Herbie, which, in itself, proved me wrong.

Answer 8

As with all living things it needs energy, it takes the energy in the form of gas to convert it into a usable form of energy to be able to function much like a living body and releases CO2 as the result or the waste, just like living bodies over time parts need repair, it requires care to keep it in good shape, with recent cars they have computers that do the thinking for it much like a brain

Answer 9

I would think that your teacher was considering whether it could be argued that a car meets at least some of the basic characteristics of life (a living thing) from a biological standpoint.

i.e. That a car uses energy, maintains homeostasis, responds to stimuli (accelerates when you hit the gas), etc.

Does that help?

Answer 10

I guess your teacher should take a living organisms course to get to know the living things.