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Biology is one of the hardest topics in highschool along with chemistry. In 6th grade, people are learning about kingdom plantae and animalia along with genus and species. Its an oversimplification that leaves kids wondering, it can't be this easy.
They often go on field trips, collect biology samples, diagram earth processes, and learn about cycles. They do bird watching, and consume volumes of encyclopedias at this age. Yet, they feel like something is missing.
In 9th and 10th grade they learn chemistry, anatomy, advanced biology, and its all very boring and archaic. It seems overly complicated, and the microscopes are usually not available at home to plug into the computer when they are bored. The additional classifications might make little sense and its hard to remember some of the species, and genus.
This is traditionally the age when kids qualify for roles like doctor, lawyer, judge, or find out they like accounting. They might be going to bootcamp at 16, its 3 months during the summer, winter, or spring.
Learning biology any later than this is considered delayed. Its not impossible to learn at an older age but new discoveries are going to be subliminal knowledge for most other people. It takes a while to catch up, but hey, then its about average.
A proposal has been to shift all that 6th grade stuff to 3rd and 4th grade, they are mostly doing multiplications and repracticing cursive, and then to add more advanced studies to 6th to 9th grade. This gives them 1-2 years before their big afterschool job. Before that they are learning how to show up to work on time, follow directions, ask questions, and not get to mad at co-workers.
The question is where to start? Cell biology makes a lot of sense and that is realistically where most working adults are more or less. Its likely not necessary to get into domains, orders, families, the molecule, or organs. A good place to start is with the eukaryotic cell that covers plants, animals, and fungi. They are three different types of cells with similar structure. They each have a correlated kingdom. Then examine genus, and species.
Its likely not necessary, to get into too much detail for other areas. Going from atom to cell, tissue, then organ system, and the actual organism like human, plant, or fungi. Molecules are hard to understand having no experience, and the organ can have multifaceted function and be involved in various human life systems.
e.g. the circulatory, respiratory, and part of the nervous system are life systems, but the nerve system, sensory system, vision system and vision system are not fully required to sustain life. Either the sensory or taste system should be present to improve chances of life when used with the digestive system.
Viruses, bacteria, and other particles are a little harder to understand. Too start off, its good to know that they are there and that they will be learned about later if time permits.
Besides the volumes of encyclopedias, field trips, and bird watching, adults can use state or national parks; cell biology allows examining the inside of a cell. Beginners will be focused on cell structure and some of the immediate surroundings of a cell. This is known as cytology and molecular biology. Microbiologists study things like viruses and protozoa. What's interesting about the protozoa is that they can have characteristics of plantae or animalia, it varies. They have eukaryotic cells and include amoeba and algae.
Water
The composition of beverages can reveal if there are animal products in the drink or if it is plant based only. Drinking water can be examined for different things, and this can be noted for things like digestive health, flavor, preference, and circulation. Water carries oxygen and that can be observed later, but it can be examined for containing plant or animal cells. Try adding sugar, chlorophyll, fruit, rinds, peels, or leaves like basil into the water and see if any cells are present. Let it sit for 1 hour or 10 minutes before it is examined.
Food
Foods don't always have clear labels, or the ingredients are recognizable as food, it just reads like a bunch of chemicals. All foods can be mixed in a blender with water, and the particles can be placed for observation under a microscope. Some foods can be soaked in water and the water around the food can be examined. A good experiment is to evaluate food particles before and after cooking.
Soil structure
Liquids have a composition, but solids have a structure. The bonds on an object are pressed against each other instead of moving through and sliding over each other. Soil can be broken down and sifted, it can then be separated by structure and the structure can be examined by itself or mixed with water. Under a microscope, there might be substructures that have visible cells. Do any of them resemble eukaryotic cells? Statistically, what is the proportion of those cells to the overall structure? How does this affect digestive health? What types of processes would a plant go through when absorbing particles from the soil? How would this change the molecular structure, in theory?
Molecules are a magnetized configuration of atomic structures. They change in composition or structure as they interact with their environment which we observe through physics, or the mathematics of movement.
Food sources can't always be tracked, cataloged, examined, audited, grievanced, and modified. However, food can be examined for health requirements, nutrition reasons, and for verfication of specifications in an individual diet. Overall, people aren't trying to reverse engineer the food source to start a competing product, they are trying to verify that the food meets their dietary requirements.
Food selection is often a long term decision, and it can affect long term health selection and preference. Available foods can affect travel or migration decisions. Its often reasonable to assume that children will live off the food supplies of their parents, and that the parents may one day be dependent on the food supplies that are available and based on their children's decision in adolescents and young adulthood.
How does the consumption of certain foods affect cellular health within a human? Will altering the human feeding pattern to mostly plant based foods change the cell structure of human beings?
In the future, will humans be able to survive on synthesized foods made mostly from plant based structures?
Liquids used in growing hydroponic plants can be examined in much the same way as water.