CodePLU Goal
Upgrading Human Mental Models
Learn how to think in Workflows
Biology Preview
Water loops, energy does not
The water cycle closes back on itself forever. Energy in a food chain travels one way and runs out — which is why food chains are short.
Tracks In This Category
| Track | Parts | Duration | Level |
|---|---|---|---|
| How the Living World Connects Four parts that build one picture. Start with water, which travels in a closed loop and is never used up. Then see how plants turn light into food, follow that energy one way up a food chain until it runs out, and finish by pulling a single species out of the web to watch the consequences travel further than anyone would predict. | 4 | 48 min | Beginner |
| How a Plant Is Built, and What Each Part Is For Finish this and you can look at any plant and say what you are seeing — not by recalling labels, but by asking what job each part has to do and where that job forces it to sit. It opens on the whole plant, where four parts answer four different problems, then zooms into the one part that is not keeping this plant alive at all, taking a flower apart to follow how a seed gets made. The last part follows that seed: five steps from dormant to feeding itself, including the one step almost everybody guesses the wrong way round. The order closes a circle on purpose — the third part builds the plant the first part took apart. | 3 | 30 min | Beginner |