Living cell

What is inside

• Membrane & wall. A thin skin that decides what comes in and what goes out; plant cells add a stiff wall outside it.
• Nucleus. The control centre: it holds the DNA, the instructions for building and running the whole cell.
• Mitochondria. The powerhouses: they burn sugar with oxygen to make energy the cell can use.
• Chloroplasts. Green kitchens that make sugar from sunlight, air and water. Plant cells only.
• Vacuole. A bag for storing water, food and waste. In plant cells it is huge and keeps the cell firm.
• Ribosomes, ER & Golgi. Where proteins are built, folded, finished and packed for delivery.
• Lysosomes & centrioles. Lysosomes break down waste and worn-out parts; centrioles help pull chromosomes apart when the cell divides.

Stories in this thing

• A cell is a tiny factory. Gate, office, power station, workshop and store
• Inside a chloroplast. Where sunlight becomes sugar
• One cell becomes two. How you grow: cell division
• How a virus gets in. A hijacker at the gate
• Why plant cells have walls. How a plant stands up without bones
• You are 30 trillion of these. Cells, tissues, organs, you

School topics it covers

• Cells
• Photosynthesis
• Cell division

How children use it

Pull it apart with one slider, tap any part to hear what it does, follow a short story read aloud, then answer a few questions. Every thing comes with experiments to try at home and study notes linked to the NCERT chapter it supports.

More things to open

• Human body — 12 systems, 700+ parts — grow from baby to grandparent.
• Mango tree — Roots, pipes and leaves that cook food from sunlight.
• Brain & senses — Light up the lobes, send a pulse down a nerve, and see why your hand moves before you say ouch.
• The weather machine — Where the monsoon comes from, why Mumbai is wet and Pune dry, and what makes thunder.
• Rocket — Ride ISRO’s LVM3 from countdown all the way to space.
• Solar system — Why it is night, why summer is hot, and how Chandrayaan reached the Moon.