What Is Living?

On a plastic sponge, my MSED group placed a penny, bird seed, beans, cotton, a toothpick, glass, some rocks, and popcorn kernels.  We predicted which of these things were alive, dead, a product of something living, or have never been alive.  Then, we soaked the sponge (still covered in all of these items) with tap water, sealed it in a zip-lock baggie, and left it on a window ledge for a week.

As we  predicted, the bird seed and beans started to sprout green life.  To our surprise, however, so did the popcorn seed!  All the other items in the bag, remained in their original state.

However, we were presented with a tricky question: how do we really know if the other items are not alive?  The toothpick came from trees, and cotton came from a plant, so are they (or aren't they) alive?  This idea leads to questions about organ transplant and abortion.  If a person is determined to be dead, but their organs are transplanted into a living human, is that first person still alive through those functioning organs?  Is a fetus considered to be alive?  These are both tough, and at times philosophical, to try to answer.  This is a good way to show students black and white concepts of life and death, but you can also go further and ask students about the toothpick or the cotton, and explain that the concept may also be gray.