Jena has been assigned a project for school where she is asked to demonstrate the activity of the sodium-potassium pump using yellow marbles to represent sodium and green marbles to represent potassium. How many marbles will Jena need and explain how she could demonstrate the movement of the ions through the pump?

What will be an ideal response?

Jena needs to explain to the class that the sodium-potassium pump pushes three sodium ions out of the cell and brings in two potassium ions. So she will need three yellow marbles to represent the sodium and two green marbles to represent the potassium. She should show that the pump moves the three yellow marbles out of the cell and brings in the two green marbles.