Primary 3 · Science · Diversity: Fungi & Bacteria
Diversity: Fungi & Bacteria questions for Primary 3 Science
10 questions to work through online, 2 of them written out the way the paper asks. Answer and you get the working straight away, then a score at the end. No sign-up, and you can retake it as often as you like.
- Why fungi are not plants
- Characteristics of fungi
- Conditions for growth
- Useful fungi and bacteria
- Reading a key
- Keeping food fresh
- Bacteria are living
- Naming how fungi reproduce
- Naming a useful fungus
- Where fungi get food
Answers and explanations for all 10 questions
Every answer with the reasoning behind it. Worth reading after you have tried the set — or on its own, if you are a parent marking it.
Why is a mushroom not grouped with plants?
Answer: It cannot make its own food.
Plants make their own food using sunlight. A mushroom cannot make its own food; it takes food from whatever it is growing on, so it is not a plant.
Which statements about fungi are correct?
Answer: A, C and D only
Fungi are living, they reproduce by spores rather than seeds, and they grow best where it is damp and dark. What they do not have is green leaves, because they do not make their own food.
After five days, mould had grown on the bread in set-up P but not in set-up Q. What does this show?
Answer: Mould needs water to grow.
The only difference between the two set-ups is that one was damp and one was dry, so the water is what made the mould grow.
Which of these shows fungi or bacteria being useful to people?
Answer: Yeast makes bread dough rise.
Yeast is a fungus, and bakers use it on purpose: it makes the gas that makes bread dough rise.
Based on the key above, what is Y most likely to be?
Answer: a mushroom
Y cannot make its own food and cannot move from place to place. A mushroom is the only one of these that fits both.
Which of these would slow down mould growing on a loaf of bread?
Answer: A and B only
Mould grows best where it is warm and damp, so cooling the bread and keeping it dry both slow it down. Sprinkling water on it would speed it up.
Which statement about bacteria is correct?
Answer: They are living things that are too small to see without a microscope.
Bacteria are living things, and they are so small that a microscope is needed to see them at all.
A plant grows from a seed. A mushroom does not. What does a mushroom reproduce by instead?
Answer: spores
Fungi reproduce by spores.
A baker adds a fungus to dough so that the bread will rise. What is the name of that fungus?
Answer: yeast
The fungus bakers add to dough is yeast.
A bracket fungus is growing on the trunk of a dead tree. Where does it get its food?
Answer: from the dead tree it is growing on
A fungus feeds on whatever it grows on. This one is breaking down the dead tree and taking its food from it.