Living or Non-living?
It seems pretty easy to tell if these things are living or not but how do you know you are right? Is there a rule you could teach someone who lost their memory so they could identify things as living or non-living? We are looking for life on Mars but how will we know when we find it?
Living Things Need Resources and Energy
Why do you eat everyday? As you probably heard someone say as you were growing up, you eat to get energy. You also use the food you eat to build new parts of your body and replace or repair worn out parts. The work you do each day, from walking to thinking to growing taller, is fueled by energy from the food you eat. But you are not the only one. In order to grow, reproduce and merely maintain themselves, all living things need energy. But where does this energy come from?

The source of energy differs for each type of living thing. In your body, the source of energy is the food you eat. Here is how animals, plants and fungi obtain their energy:
  • Consumers, such as animals, must eat plants or other animals in order to obtain energy and building materials.
  • Other consumers, such as mushrooms and other fungi obtain energy by absorbing nutrients from dead or decaying matter. That’s why you often see fungi growing on a fallen tree; the rotting tree is their source of energy (Figure below). 
  • Producers, such as plants, don’t eat like animals do. Instead, as you learned in the previous unit, they use energy from the sun to make their food, or sugars, through the process of photosynthesis.
Since plants harvest energy from the sun and other organisms get their energy from plants, nearly all the energy of living things initially comes from the sun.

Above & Beyond

Options:
​Take notes on what you read. 

You could also include other examples of living and non-living things (that are not on this page) and explain why you might think they are living when they are not/or the opposite.

 You could cover your notes in post-its, asking questions, defining terms, and exploring deeper into the text. 
Each of the types of organisms described also exchanges gases with its environment in an effort to use the energy it takes in. For example, to burn the food you eat, you take in oxygen and release carbon dioxide gas as a waste product. Plants, on the other hand, take in carbon dioxide to perform photosynthesis and build their sugars. They release oxygen as a waste product of that process.

Living things also are made of water, making it another resource, in addition to energy and gases, they need to survive. The reactions that take place within living things occur within that watery medium. Many living things even use water as their environment.

Living Things Are Made of Cells
If you zoom in very closely on a leaf of a plant, or on the skin on your hand, or a drop of blood, you will find cells. Cells are the smallest unit of living things. They are like tiny factories where virtually all life processes take place. Most cells are so small that they are usually visible only through a microscope. Some organisms, like bacteria, plankton that live in the ocean, or the paramecium (shown below) are made of just one cell. 
They are known as unicellular organisms (the prefix "uni-" means one).  Other organisms, like oak trees and jaguars, have millions of cells. They are known as multicellular organisms (the prefix "multi-" means many).  Although the cells in these organisms are microscopic, other cells, like eggs, are some of the biggest cells around. A chicken egg is just one huge cell!

Regardless of the type of organism, all living cells share certain basic structures. For example, all cells are enclosed by a membrane. The cell membrane separates the watery cell from its external environment. It also controls what enters or leaves the cell. Although the cells of different organisms are built differently, they all function much the same way. Every cell must get energy from food, be able to grow and reproduce, and respond to its environment.
For more information about cells, click the link above. 
Living Things Respond and Adapt to Their Environment
Have you ever seen a turtle retract its head into its shell when it senses danger? Did you know that sunflowers actually move toward the sun throughout a day? Or, maybe you've noticed your pupils constrict when you move from a dark room to a bright one. All living things are able to respond to stimuli, which are changes in their environment that cause them to react. These stimuli could include changes in light, heat, sound, and chemical and mechanical contact. Organisms have means for receiving information, such as eyes, ears, and taste buds. In general the organism's response helps it to survive and reproduce.
Watch this amazing time-lapse video to see how a plant responds to the stimuli of light and gravity as it grows. Normally plants grow away from gravity and toward light but when both are in the same direction the plant struggles to respond as it normally would to both as they conflict. 


Organisms are also well adapted to their environment.  For example, polar bears would not survive very well in the Sahara Desert, but their thick fur allows them to thrive in cold, polar regions.  Scientists have learned that the different shaped beaks allow the birds to eat the different types of seeds on the various islands. Again, the birds are adapted to the conditions in their differing environments.
Living Things Grow and Reproduce
Like plants in the video you watched in the previous section, all living things have the potential for growth. For example, ducklings have a lot of growing to do to catch up in size to their mother. Multicellular organisms like ducks grow by increasing the size and number of their cells. Their cells divide and enlarge, which causes the organisms to increase in size. Unicellular organisms, since they are made of just one cell, don't rely on their cells to divide.  Instead, their one cell just grows in size.

As the ducklings grow, they will develop and mature into adults. By adulthood, they will be able to reproduce. Reproduction is the production of offspring. The ability to reproduce is another characteristic of living things. You may know that zoos across the world are making an effort to create breeding programs to prevent populations of organisms from going extinct. The zoos then release the organisms back into their native habitat to increase the population. Populations of organisms that do not reproduce will go extinct. As a result, species like that ultimately failed to reproduce are not alive today.


The key to preventing extinction is for an organism to reproduce before its life span runs out. An organism's life span is the amount of time it is expected to live. Because organisms are living, another characteristic they possess is that they will also die. The life spans of organisms vary greatly.  For example, the American box turtle may live for 123 years, while a water insect known as the mayfly lives no longer than one day! It merely lives to reproduce and carry on the species in that short time.
RECAP:

Below is a list of characteristics that are shared by all organisms:
  1. responsiveness to the environment
  2. growth and change
  3. ability to reproduce
  4. have a metabolism and breathe
  5. maintain homeostasis
  6. being made of cells
  7. passing traits onto offspring

This text was adapted from CK12.com. It is licensed under the Creative Commons (CC BY-NC 3.0) 

Response to Stimuli - the cuttlefish
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Photos from rodtuk, GreenRon, Jevgenijs Slihto