Plant cell, animal cell and bacterium: an interactive cell diagram

Guide · Updated 2026-11-10

Tap the organelles of a plant cell, an animal cell and a bacterium to learn their jobs, compare the three in one table and work out magnification. A plain guide to the cell explorer.

Open the Cell explorer Free, in your browser, nothing uploaded.

A cell diagram in a book cannot answer questions. The cell explorer can. It draws a plant cell, an animal cell and a bacterium, and when you tap a part it tells you its name, its job and which of the three cells contain it. It also builds a side-by-side table of all the parts and helps with the magnification sums that turn up in school tests. It suits students in Class 9 to Class 11 and anyone who wants a quick refresher. Afterwards, watch water cross a cell membrane in the osmosis lab, see chloroplasts at work in the photosynthesis lab, or learn how lenses magnify in the microscope and telescope tool.

What it is

All living things are built from cells. Inside each cell are smaller structures called organelles (“little organs”). Each one does a job, a bit like the departments of a factory: one stores the instructions, one releases energy, one packs and ships products.

Biologists split cells into two big groups:

• Eukaryotes keep their DNA inside a nucleus wrapped in a membrane. Plant and animal cells are eukaryotes.
• Prokaryotes have no nucleus. Their DNA sits in a region of the cytoplasm called the nucleoid. Bacteria are prokaryotes, and they are much smaller.

The explorer also deals with size. Cells are measured in micrometres (µm). One micrometre is a thousandth of a millimetre, so 1 mm = 1000 µm. To compare a drawing with the real cell, you use:

magnification = image size ÷ real size

Both sizes must be in the same unit. For a light microscope, the total magnification is:

total magnification = eyepiece power × objective power

The eyepiece is the lens you look through. The objective is the lens just above the slide.

How to use it

1. Choose Class 9 for the main parts with a short job each, or Class 11 to add extra parts (nucleolus, centrioles, plasmodesmata, plasmids, capsule, pili, mesosome) and a longer note on each.
2. Choose the cell: Plant, Animal or Bacterium.
3. Tap any part of the drawing. The box under it shows the name, the job and a “Found in” line. A scale bar under the drawing shows how big a few micrometres are.
4. Press Zoom in on it to fill the view with that part. Press Zoom out to go back.
5. Scroll to Compare the cells. Each row shows a tick or a dash for plant, animal and bacterium. Tap a row to jump to that part. Save the table with Download table (CSV), or save the drawing and table as an image, PDF or Word file.
6. In How much bigger?, type the eyepiece power (1 to 100) and the objective power (1 to 200). The tool gives the total magnification and how big the chosen cell would look.
7. Finish with Check yourself. Press Check answers to see the working, and New questions for a fresh set.

A worked example

Say you print the animal cell drawing and measure it with a ruler. It is 60 mm wide. The explorer uses a typical animal cell size of 20 µm.

First put both sizes in the same unit: 20 µm = 20 ÷ 1000 = 0.02 mm.

Magnification = 60 mm ÷ 0.02 mm = ×3000.

Now look at the same cell under a light microscope with a ×15 eyepiece and a ×10 objective:

• total magnification = 15 × 10 = ×150
• image size = 20 µm × 150 = 3000 µm = 3 mm

Switch the cell to Bacterium (typical length 2 µm) and change the objective to ×100:

• total magnification = 15 × 100 = ×1500
• image size = 2 µm × 1500 = 3000 µm = 3 mm

So a bacterium needs ten times more magnification than an animal cell to look the same size. That is why oil-immersion objectives exist.

Where it is used

• School labs. Before you look at onion peel or cheek cells, you can find the parts you should expect to see, and the parts you will not (ribosomes are far too small for a school microscope).
• Medicine and nursing. Many antibiotics work by attacking things only bacteria have, such as the bacterial cell wall or the smaller 70S ribosome. The comparison table makes those differences clear.
• Food and farming. Plant cell walls and vacuoles explain why vegetables go limp when they lose water, and why salting draws water out.
• Biotechnology. Plasmids, the small extra DNA rings in bacteria, are the workhorse for copying genes in labs. The Class 11 view shows where they sit.

Common mistakes

• Mixing units. Dividing 60 mm by 20 µm gives ×3, not ×3000. Always convert first: 1 mm = 1000 µm.
• Adding lens powers. A ×10 eyepiece and a ×40 objective give ×400, not ×50. Multiply them.
• Saying plant cells have no mitochondria. They have both mitochondria and chloroplasts. Check the “Found in” line.
• Calling the bacterial DNA a nucleus. There is no membrane around it, so it is a nucleoid.
• Treating the drawing as to scale inside. The parts are spread out so you can tap them. Real cells are packed tight.

Questions people ask

Which parts are only in plant cells? In this explorer: chloroplasts, and at Class 11 level the plasmodesmata. Plant cells also have a cell wall, which bacteria share but animal cells lack.

Why does the magnification on my screen change? It depends on how wide the drawing is on your screen. A phone shows a smaller drawing than a laptop, so the number is lower. Zooming in raises it.

Can I use it for revision without a teacher? Yes. The questions change each time, and the worked answers show each step, so you can see where a sum went wrong.