How Living Things Work
See the hidden rules that keep organisms alive, from self-regulating cells to evolving ecosystems. Learn how life balances, reproduces, adapts, and connects across the planet.
Like Duolingo, but for How Living Things Work. Tomo turns the whole topic into a game you play five minutes a day, until it actually sticks.
A short one: 12 levels across 2 sections, about 24 minutes end to end, roughly 5 days at five minutes a day. It moves through Reading the Living Machine and Seeing the Bigger Picture. It starts from scratch.
Free forever · No credit card · iPhone & Android
Key ideas in How Living Things Work
- A living body must constantly burn energy to keep its internal environment stable and distinct from the surrounding world
- Reaching chemical and thermal equilibrium with the environment means all cellular work has ceased
- Negative feedback loops detect a change away from a baseline target and trigger actions in the opposite direction
- When body temperature rises, the body activates cooling mechanisms like sweating to lower it back to normal
- Fevers and shivering are coordinated responses directed by the brain to slow down pathogens and generate warmth
- Inflammation and swelling deliberately send extra blood and immune cells to fight off invaders
- Uncontrolled tissue failure, such as damaged alveoli failing to exchange gas, is true malfunction rather than a regulated defense
- The basal metabolic rate accounts for the bulk of daily calorie use, powering basic cellular repair, ion pumping, and steady warmth
- Physical movement, even for active people, accounts for a much smaller percentage of total daily energy burn than baseline cellular maintenance
- Short-term stress responses help the body adapt and recover stronger once baseline is restored
- When stressors persist continuously without a rest period, regulatory mechanisms wear down and cause structural tissue damage
- DNA provides instructions rather than a fixed, rigid final outcome
- Environmental factors like soil acidity or nutrients influence how genetic instructions are expressed in living things
- Genetically identical organisms can develop noticeably different traits when raised in different environments
- Most visible physical traits, such as height and skin tone, are shaped by hundreds of genes working together
- Single-gene traits are rare exceptions in nature rather than the normal rule
You've tried the other tabs
Thirty open tabs. Four facts you actually kept.
You watched. You nodded. By Sunday it was gone.
One answer, then back to scrolling.
Eight weeks. You meant to finish. You didn't.
Tomo gives How Living Things Work the Duolingo treatment: levels, streaks, and quick quizzes that test what you just learned. That game loop is what the tabs above never had, so it's the one you actually finish.
Here's what playing it feels like
A real question from this course. Take your best guess.
Imagine your body wanders away from its normal baseline. What does a negative feedback loop do?
Get it right to open this lesson and 11 more in the app.
Where How Living Things Work takes you
- 1
Reading the Living Machine
- Spotting the Body's Balancing Acts
- Decoding Heredity and Variation
- 2
Seeing the Bigger Picture
- Tracking Natural Selection in Action
- Tracing Ecological Networks
2 sections · 4 units · 12 levels. Built to play, not to enroll.
Tomo is in ChatGPT
Tomo is also a ChatGPT plugin: the same playable courses, built and played inside your chat.
Add Tomo to ChatGPT- What to ask
- “Make me a Tomo course on black holes.” “Turn this chat into a Tomo course.”
- What you get
- Quick questions with instant feedback, hearts and stars, ready to play in about a minute.
- Where it goes
- No sign-up to start. Connect your Tomo account and your streak carries on in the app.
You pick the voice
How Living Things Work is taught in the Storyteller style: every lesson is a story. Want a different feel? In the app you can spin up the same topic in any of Tomo's teaching styles. Same facts, totally different vibe.
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Start How Living Things Work today.
Download Tomo, search How Living Things Work, and play your first lesson in under a minute.