Level 4 · Science S4.5

Nerves, hormones and balance

How the body and plants send messages and keep conditions steady.

Follow a message along nerves from a receptor to the brain and out to a muscle, and see why a reflex is faster than a decision. Learn how the eye focuses, how hormones work more slowly through the blood, and how the body holds blood sugar, temperature and water steady. Then see how hormones control the menstrual cycle, and how plants respond to light and gravity.

Start readingS4.5.1 The nervous system

8 chapters. Your place is kept on this device only.

You are ready for this book if

You can describe what happens to your pulse and breathing when you run.

Contents

  1. 1The nervous system, readunderstood
  2. 2Reflexes, readunderstood
  3. 3The eye, readunderstood
  4. 4Hormones, readunderstood
  5. 5Blood sugar and diabetes, readunderstood
  6. 6Temperature and water balance, readunderstood
  7. 7Hormones and the menstrual cycle, readunderstood
  8. 8Plant responses, readunderstood

Keep it, print it, pass it on

For parents and teachers

For learners who can follow a written argument and have met the body, the senses and plants in earlier books. In many schools this fits learners of about 14 to 16, and older learners can use it as a reference. Each chapter takes two or three short sessions. A learner can work alone: every exercise has its answer and the reason for it. The Try it activities use a ruler, a cup of water, a window or lamp in a dim room, a cardboard box and a few beans or other seeds. Nobody should look at the Sun, and seeds are not eaten. The chapters on diabetes and on the menstrual cycle give established science only. They name no medicine and no dose, and they send a reader with a health question to a health worker.

Strand: The body. Written and drawn by attnom. Free to read, print and share.