Growth

Growth is a permanent increase in the size or mass of an organism.

all growth results from the production of new cells by mitosis. The bigger the organism, the more cells it contains.

one way in which you could measure growth is by weighing the organism.

body cells contain a large amount of water, so much of this weight will be water. This measure is called the wet weight. <-- this can give inaccruate results since the amount of water can vary from organisms.

an accurate way would be to dry out the body in an oven, this is called the dry weight,

this kills the organism so it is often used to compare growth in plants.

Another way to measure growth is to look at size and length plants can be measured from the shoot tip, to groundlevel to give their height.measuring across the widest part of the plant is called its spread.

height and spread are used by garden centres and plant catalogues so costumers know how big a plant will grow.

most cells are made for specific purposes. when cells divide they may undergo differentiation. the new cells develop special characteristics to allow them to do their job. example : red blood cells differentiate from special cells in bone marrow.

differentiation : The process in which different cells develop into different cell types.

similar cells may be grouped to form a tissue, such as heart muscle. different tissues together may make an organ, such as the heart. organs together make up a system, such as the circulatory…