Biology  by Bradford
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IB Biology Cells and Membranes Pub Quiz

Cells and Membranes as a pub quiz for your class: review rounds on these subtopics, mixed with pure-fun rounds so it feels like a night out and not another test. Opens at SL; switch to HL in the builder to add the higher level cards.

Print teacher pagesPrint student pagesOpen in the builder to change it

Teacher pages are the quizmaster script and tally sheet. Student pages are the team answer sheet, handout and picture sheet. Both open ready to print, on A4 or US Letter.

What it covers

IB Biology at SL, with HL cards when you switch the level: A2.1 Origins of cells, A2.2 Cell structure, B2.1 Membranes and membrane transport, B2.2 Organelles and compartmentalization and B2.3 Cell specialization.

The running order

nine rounds and a handout of riddles. Review rounds are drawn from these topics each time you open the quiz, so two classes never get the same paper, and every review round can be redrawn in a click.

  1. Riddle me this review
    Course terms as riddles: "I have a head that loves water and two tails that hate it…" Teams write what it is.
  2. Close-up fun
    A tiny zoomed-in patch. What's the full picture?
  3. Fact or fiction fun
    Myths and true-but-weird facts. Teams write Fact or Fiction.
  4. Think it through review
    Scenarios, odd ones out, true or false and why, puzzles: questions to reason through. Give teams a little longer.
  5. Films in science-speak fun
    A film plot, described like a research abstract. Name the film.
  6. Who am I? Scientists fun
    Three clues, hardest first. 3 points after clue 1, 2 after clue 2, 1 after clue 3.
  7. Missing vowels: course terms review
    Your key terms with the vowels taken out.
  8. Funny animal noises fun
    YouTube clips of animals making ridiculous noises. Screen off, listen, guess, then watch the reveal.
  9. Closest wins fun
    Estimation questions. Nearest team wins the point. Doubles as the tiebreaker.

A taste of the questions

Think it through

Scenarios, odd ones out and true or false and why, from IB Biology.

  1. A new organism is found at a deep-sea vent. Before anyone puts it under a microscope, what does cell theory let you predict about it?
  2. Shake me and my kind in water and we line up tail to tail in a double sheet, no cell needed. What about us makes that happen?
  3. Ribosome, vesicle, nucleus, cell wall: which is the odd one out, and why?
  4. A neuron and I, a liver cell, came from the same person and carry exactly the same genes, yet we look and work nothing alike. Why?
  5. A cell is 20 µm across. How wide should it be in a drawing at ×500 magnification?
  6. Sodium ions are tiny, far smaller than glucose. Why can't they cross a bare phospholipid bilayer?
Answers
  1. It is made of one or more cells (cell theory says every organism is built from cells, so this one must be too)
  2. We're amphipathic (hydrophobic tails hide from water inside; hydrophilic heads face it on both sides)
  3. The cell wall (not an organelle: it lies outside the plasma membrane, not a discrete subunit in the cell)
  4. Different genes are expressed in each of us (switched on), so we make different proteins
  5. 10 mm (20 µm × 500 = 10 000 µm = 1 cm)
  6. They are charged (ions cannot pass the hydrophobic core, so they need channel or pump proteins)

Riddle me this

Course terms as riddles. Teams write what it is.

  1. I'm too small for the light microscope, I come in 70S and 80S sizes, and I build proteins. What am I?
  2. I'm buried deep in the bilayer, often poking out of both sides, and salt water won't wash me off. What am I?
  3. I spin broken cells so fast that their parts settle out in layers. Without me, nobody could study a mitochondrion on its own. What am I?
  4. I turn a do-anything beginner into a neuron, a muscle fibre or a skin cell by switching some genes on and others off. What am I?
  5. I have a folded inner membrane and I release energy by aerobic respiration. A sperm crams me into its midpiece. What am I?
Answers
  1. Ribosome
  2. Integral protein
  3. Ultracentrifuge
  4. Differentiation
  5. Mitochondrion

Quickfire

Short recall from the same topics.

  1. Image size divided by actual size
  2. Line showing a real length on an image
  3. Ability to tell two close points apart
  4. Two-layer sheet of amphipathic molecules
  5. How O₂ and CO₂ pass between phospholipids
  6. Net water movement towards more solute
  7. Discrete subunit of a cell with a function
  8. Breaking cells and separating organelles
Answers
  1. Magnification
  2. Scale bar
  3. Resolution
  4. Phospholipid bilayer
  5. Simple diffusion
  6. Osmosis
  7. Organelle
  8. Cell fractionation

How it runs

  1. Open it in the builder. The running order loads ready to go. Swap, add or drop rounds, or draw a round's questions again.
  2. Present it or print it. Present puts each round on the projector in 16:9 with quizmaster notes. Print gives the script, team answer sheets, a picture sheet and a tally sheet on A4 or US Letter, with no projector needed.
  3. Score it. Teams swap sheets, mark, and each plays one joker to double a round. The scores page reveals the leaderboard from last place up.

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