Living cells are very fast and crowded places (2012)
&gt; cells are extremely crowded and busy places<p>Cells are extremely crowded and busy... <i>and random and violent</i> places.<p>Molecular biology dances in a nano moshpit from hell.<p><i>The Inner Life of a Cell</i> is badly misleading.  It reinforces many educationally toxic misconceptions.  Yes, the graphics technology was limiting.  But the video doesn&#x27;t attempt to mitigate the negative impact.  For instance, adding a couple of frames of Goodsell&#x27;s crowded proteins, fading to sparseness, could have reduced its reinforcement of the &quot;big empty cell&quot; misconception.<p>And it doesn&#x27;t just hide almost everything (crowded), or slow everything way down (busy), or show completely aphysical rendezvous and docking (random), but it also strings together carefully selected snapshots to tell a misleadingly peaceful narrative (violent).<p>That kinesin walking along, towing a vesicle?  Its &quot;feet&quot; are actually madly flapping around.  It is randomly &quot;stepping&quot; back and forth - only its <i>net</i> motion is biased.  And between one net step and the next, that big vesicle has been slammed around to every position within reach of that tether.  It&#x27;s a random walk on a leash.  Reality isn&#x27;t a donkey quietly towing a slowly-moving barge.  It&#x27;s a balloon flapping madly in a hurricane, tethered to an intoxicated panicked mouse clinging to a rope.<p>Biology rides a ragged energetic edge, between things being too strong, too expensive to dis&#x2F;assemble, and being smashed to pieces too quickly.<p>More generally, the video illustrates a pervasive problem with science education media.  Even when done &quot;well&quot;, some aspects are done with great skill and care, while other aspects are silently left utterly bogus.  Pity the students, who lack the knowledge to sort out <i>which is which</i>.  So rich ecologies of misconceptions are established.  And are intractably expensive to displace.  It&#x27;s so easy to create content that leaves students worse off than if they had seen nothing at all.  So that&#x27;s, in general, what we create.<p>The violence of nanoscale is a critical, defining characteristic.  That so many biology undergrads are unclear on it, let alone high-school and primary students, shows just how very far we have to go before teaching deep understanding, transferable knowledge, and cross-cutting principles, finally becomes a reality.  Or more upbeat, how breathtakingly awesome science education might eventually become.<p>(FWIW, the top section of my very crufty <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.clarifyscience.info&#x2F;part&#x2F;Atoms" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.clarifyscience.info&#x2F;part&#x2F;Atoms</a> might help some with getting a handle on at least the size aspect of small things.)