Neuron Safari Preview
We were part of 2020's fantastic Glasgow Science Festival, and to celebrate Neuron Safari Creator Richard made the video above to give you a bit of a guided tour and some fact about your brain and the cells that it is made of. Our activity is free to download for anyone with a copy of Minecraft, but we didn't want to leave out anyone who didn't!
For those of you craving more science facts, we've made a list below, with some cool websites you should visit too to find out even more!
For those of you craving more science facts, we've made a list below, with some cool websites you should visit too to find out even more!
Fun Facts!
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As a baby, your skull is made up of 44 bones! As you get older, these fuse together until you have 22 (14 for the face, 8 for the rest of the skull). |
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When you are born your brain weighs about 350 g, which is roughly 10 % of your total weight! That's why as a baby your head seems really big compared to your body. In adulthood, this increases to 1.3 - 1.4 kg, but this is now only 1 - 2 % of your total weight (and means your head now doesn't look so big!). |
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There are 86 BILLION (86,000,000,000) neurons in the brain! There are also another 86 BILLION of another type of cell called a glial cell. That's a lot of cells! |
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If you were to collect all the DNA in all your cells, tie them together, and lay them out like a piece of string, it would be long enough to go from Earth to Pluto and back to Earth! |
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Your DNA has recipes for about 20,000 proteins. You can read some of these recipes differently though, so we have somewhere between 100,000 and 1 million different types of protein in our bodies! |
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Neurons "talk" to one another at something called a synapse. One neuron releases chemicals that are captured by another neuron. This passes information from one neuron to another.
There are a LOT of synapses in your brain: 150,000,000,000,000 synapses!! |
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learn.genetics.utah.edu/content/cells/scale/
A really fun way of seeing just how small some of the things we’ve shown you in this safari are!
http://book.bionumbers.org/
A little trickier to read, but packed full of facts and numbers about biology.
https://www.bna.org.uk/resources/written-resources/
Some free books filled with cool Neuroscience information here. Fun fact: Neuroscience - Science of the Brain was one of the books that made me want to do neuroscience! Even better, it’s available in 21 languages!
https://fold.it/
A game where you can really help scientists by folding proteins.
https://www.rsb.org.uk/get-involved/biologyweek/schools
Lots of free resources linked here from last year’s Biology Week
https://edheads.org/?
Some excellent games with a biology spin (requires Flash)
https://www.exploratorium.edu/explore
A ton of videos, games and activities across many different science subjects, not just biology!
https://www.brainpop.com/
Another website filled to the brim with activities, videos and games. Also available in French and Spanish.
A really fun way of seeing just how small some of the things we’ve shown you in this safari are!
http://book.bionumbers.org/
A little trickier to read, but packed full of facts and numbers about biology.
https://www.bna.org.uk/resources/written-resources/
Some free books filled with cool Neuroscience information here. Fun fact: Neuroscience - Science of the Brain was one of the books that made me want to do neuroscience! Even better, it’s available in 21 languages!
https://fold.it/
A game where you can really help scientists by folding proteins.
https://www.rsb.org.uk/get-involved/biologyweek/schools
Lots of free resources linked here from last year’s Biology Week
https://edheads.org/?
Some excellent games with a biology spin (requires Flash)
https://www.exploratorium.edu/explore
A ton of videos, games and activities across many different science subjects, not just biology!
https://www.brainpop.com/
Another website filled to the brim with activities, videos and games. Also available in French and Spanish.