Introduction

Why is Surface Area Important to Normal Cell Function?

• "A high surface-to-volume ratio facilitates the exchange of materials between a cell and its environment."
• Implicit commonsense and biological knowledge
• The answer is in the explanation - the reasoning
  • Assurance is not enough

Implicit Commonsense Knowledge

• Every cell has a surface area and a surface-to-volume ratio
• Surface area is proportional to surface-to-volume ratio
• Proportional is symmetric and transitive
• If something is important, and is proportional to another thing, then the other thing is also important
  (importance is transferred by proportionality)

Implicit Biological Knowledge

• Every cell has an environment.
• Every cell and environment have an exchange rate
• The exchange rate is important.

Two Encodings for ATP

• Shallow, which gives the intuition
• Deep, which gives the power
• Shallow ≠ Deep