NN+Sperm+Article

Sperm Article (1) What is a germ cell? (male germ cell and female germ cell) (2) Compare the size of a sperm to an egg. Insert a picture here comparing the sizes.
 * A germ cell is the reproductive/sex cell. For a male it is the sperm and the female is the egg cell.
 * The egg cell is 30 times as large as the sperm cell. The sperm cell is the smallest cell in the body and the egg cell is the largest, big enough to see without a microscope.

(3) Compare the number of eggs produced by human females to the number sperm produced by human males. (4) Describe semen. What is the purpose of semen? (5) What can be wrong with sperm? What percentage of sperm are usually normal? (6) Where do sperm develop? Why could a fever disrupt sperm production for months? (7) Describe in detail the three parts of a sperm cell. (8) How do the sperm react to being in the female reproductive tract? How do they know where to go? (9) How is the egg only fertilized by one sperm?
 * Females produce about one million eggs with only about 500 eggs being ripe, as opposed to the average male producing about 12 trillion sperm cells.
 * Semen is a white viscous fluid that provides the sperm with energy through various sugars and nutrients.
 * The heads can be misshapen or there can be multiple heads. There are usually less than 15% of sperm that are able to fertilize eggs.
 * Sperm develop in the testes at a temperature two degrees less than average body temperature. A fever can disrupt production because the process is "delicate" and the increase in temperature changes the conditions the sperm are made in.
 * The flagellum: the tail that helps the sperm to swim to the egg
 * The mitochondria: where the sperm cell gets the energy to swim to the egg
 * The head: where the chromosomes are stored to fertilize the egg with.
 * The acrosome: the enzymes are stored here to dissolve the eggs protection so that it can be fertilized
 * The sperm receives a chemical signal from the vaginal membrane that tells it what to do.
 * Once the egg has been fertilized there is an electrical jolt that depolarizes the wall of the egg cell, preventing more sperm from fertilizing the egg.