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Course: High school biology - NGSS > Unit 2
Lesson 1: Cell division and organism growthCreativity break: how do you apply creativity to biology?
Hear from biology professionals about how they apply creativity to biology. Created by Khan Academy.
Want to join the conversation?
- If bees have no liver, how could the parasite be eating a bee's liver?(14 votes)
- He may not have been speaking of liver in the way you may think, he was speaking of certain fat cells that give a bee the ability to detoxify/purify/filter what it ingests. (Which is what a liver does) So essentially the parasites are feeding on fat that works as a liver, which consequently will kill the bee.
Hope that helps :)(7 votes)
- I love how Dr. Ramsey gets meta about creativity - using creativity to explain creativity in biology! Those analogies, engaging presentation style, rigorous and fun explanations - super-creative!(12 votes)
- Guys, what are the black hole badges in Khan academy?(2 votes)
- i love how she says secret sauce at the beginning(1 vote)
- do beefs not have a liver?(1 vote)
- Well yes…but actually no(1 vote)
- anyone else is forced to be here cuz of school?(1 vote)
Video transcript
(upbeat music) - One question that people ask me is how do I apply creativity to the presentations that I give? And my secret sauce is to
come up with a visual image that anybody, I don't
care if you're the adult, whether you're a fifth
grader or second grader, that you can grasp that concept,
and here's my favorite one. So every single time you move your body, there's whole bunches of neurochemicals that are released in your brain. And you've heard of these neurochemicals, dopamine, noradrenaline, serotonin. And so that's the fact,
but the image that I give is that every single
time you move your body, it's like giving your brain
a wonderful bubble bath of neurochemicals that enrich your brain that change that neurochemical milieu, and that is the image that everybody that comes to my talks leaves with and inspires them a little
bit to move their body more. So can you come up with that image, that playful fun, but
factually accurate image that conveys your message? That will be your secret sauce too. - Have you heard that the
bees aren't doing great? Well, I've been studying
that and trying to understand how their complex health issues connect to a curious little parasite that's in nearly every
honeybee colony worldwide. it's called Varroa destructor, by the way. Now, before I started
this study, we thought that it was an open and shut case that the parasite was
sucking out the bee's blood, sort of like a tick on a puppy, but I thought something more
strange might be going on. The damage that it caused
just didn't seem like the damage that would be
caused by blood removal. The feeding process is super
difficult to see though, so I had this idea. I fed different color glowing food to the bees in their pollen
and their sugar water to color their organs specific colors. Then when the parasite fed on the bees, I could tell which organ it was eating based on which color was
in its digestive system. And it turns out they were
eating the bees' liver, by the way, which is pretty weird. But this kind of work
is actually pretty fun, and it was definitely a
place where creativity was rewarded in biology. (upbeat music)