Chapter 2: Patterns

Web Links

Life Builds From the Bottom Up --- Choose "Scanning Electron Microscopy," and choose Gecko from the list of organisms that appears. Then you can view the gecko's foot at several different magnifications, choose light levels, focus and contrast, and find other things to view microscopically, too.

Life Uses a Few Themes to Generate Many Variations --- Lets you do your own “stretching” on a computerized grid.

Life Encourages Variety by Recombining Information --- Read about the black death and it’s effects on the human population. The usefulness of genetic diversity becomes clear.

Life Occurs in Water --- A simulation of molecular motion in liquid water.

Life Works in Cycles --- The "Doing Science" box on p.59 quotes from T.H. Huxley's "The Crayfish" published in 1880. You can find the complete text of Huxley’s book here. We recommend you read Ch. 1, The Natural History of the Common Crayfish.

Life Recycles Everything it Uses --- Insects in Legal Investigations at the Forensic Entomology web site.

Life is Interconnected and Interdependent --- A slide show displaying the interconnectedness of Porcupine Caribou with climate, plant growth, insect populations and behavior.

Life is Interconnected and Interdependent --- The Hubbard Brook ecosystem study at the University of New Hampshire.

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