Water World
This property of water allows insects to slide or walk across the surface of a pond without breaking through.
What is surface tension (or cohesion)?
The monomer units that chain together via peptide bonds to build functional proteins.
What are amino acids?
Known as the powerhouses of the cell, these organelles carry out cellular respiration to produce energy in the form of ATP.
What are the mitochondria?
In the movie Shrek, the famous ogre states that ogres have layers, just like this root vegetable.
What is an onion?
The sum total of all building and breaking chemical reactions inside a living organism to manage energy resources.
What is metabolism?
Because liquid water dissolves a massive variety of polar and ionic solutes, it is given this ultimate nickname.
What is the Universal Solvent?
While plant cells store extra glucose as starch, animal cells store their excess glucose energy as this polysaccharide.
What is glycogen?
When human body systems regulate blood sugar levels near 90 mg/dL, they are maintaining this dynamic internal balance.
What is homeostasis?
This superhero gained his web-slinging abilities after being bitten by a radioactive arachnid.
Who is Spider-Man (Peter Parker)?
In a polar water molecule, shared electrons spend more time near oxygen, giving oxygen a partial negative charge and hydrogen this charge.
What is a partial positive charge?
Tall trees rely on this phenomenon—a combo of adhesion and cohesion—to move water upward from roots to leaves.
What is capillary action?
DNA and RNA are nucleic acid polymers built out of these repeating monomer subunits.
What are nucleotides?
Extreme heat or severe pH shifts alter an enzyme's active site, causing it to lose function through this process.
What is denaturation?
What is the only mammal capable of true, sustained flight?
What is a bat?
Despite their name, these sea creatures have no brain, no heart, no bones, and are composed of about 95% water.
What are jellyfish?
Unlike most substances, solid ice floats on liquid water because hydrogen bonds freeze into this type of structure, making ice less dense.
What is an expanded crystalline lattice?
The chemical process of breaking down a complex polymer into monomers by inserting a molecule of water.
What is hydrolysis?
The complete hierarchy of biological structure running from simplest to most complex starts with organelle and cell, ending with this top level.
What is an organism? (Full sequence: Organelle → Cell → Tissue → Organ → Organ System → Organism)
In the video game Minecraft, this green, legless mob sneaks up on players and explodes.
What is a Creeper?
The universal genetic code found across all living species is constructed around this specific number of nitrogenous bases.
What is 4? (A, T, C, G)
This thermal property of water requires 1 calorie of energy to raise 1 gram of water by 1 °C, helping oceans resist drastic temperature changes.
What is specific heat capacity?
These nonpolar, hydrophobic molecules contain glycerol and fatty acids, making up cell membranes and storing long-term energy.
What are lipids (or phospholipids)?
When baker's yeast reproduces by growing a smaller bud containing an exact copy of parental DNA, it is using this mode of reproduction.
What is asexual reproduction (or budding)?
This fruit possesses so much potassium and natural radiation that a truckload of them can trigger false alarms at radiation detectors!
What is a banana?
Honey never spoils. Archeologists have found 3,000-year-old pots of edible honey in ancient Egyptian tombs because honey lacks water and has high acidity, preventing this process.
What is bacterial growth (or decomposition)?