Human Biology syllabus, dot point by dot point
Every dot point in the WA Human Biology syllabus, in syllabus order, with a focused answer for each. Open any dot point for the answer, exam-style questions and links to related points.
Unit 3: Homeostasis and Disease
Unit overview →What are the different types of disease-causing agents and how do they spread between people?
How do vaccines protect a whole community, and why are antibiotics losing their power against bacteria?
How does the body keep blood glucose steady between meals and after eating a sugary snack?
How is the nervous system divided up so that some responses are voluntary and others run automatically?
How do hormones coordinate slow, widespread and sustained responses across the body?
How does the body hold its core temperature near 37 degrees whether it is freezing or sweltering outside?
How does the body defend itself against pathogens and remember the ones it has already met?
How does the body keep its internal environment stable when conditions outside keep changing?
How does a nerve cell turn a stimulus into an electrical signal that travels the length of an axon?
What happens to the body when homeostatic control mechanisms fail or are overwhelmed?
How do the kidneys keep the water and salt content of the blood constant whether you drink a litre of water or sweat it out?
How does the nervous system detect change and respond within a fraction of a second?
Unit 4: Human Variation and Evolution
Unit overview →How does selection pressure reshape a population, and why does it sometimes favour the extremes and sometimes the average?
Why do some traits come in clear-cut categories while others vary smoothly across a whole range?
How can chance alone change a population's genetics, and what does a population with no evolution look like?
How does one species split into two that can no longer interbreed?
How is the information that makes us different from one another stored and read in our DNA?
What anatomical trends mark the evolution of modern humans from earlier hominins?
Where does the variation between individual humans actually come from?
What features do humans share with other primates, and where do we sit in the classification of life?
How did modern humans come to populate the whole planet, and what does the evidence say about where we started?
How do the allele frequencies of a whole population change from one generation to the next?
What different lines of evidence show that humans share ancestry with other species?