collectively known as cells

There are few things as demotivating as discovering that in the end, in spite of (or maybe thanks to) all your efforts, your students learned absolutely nothing. Some of mine, apparently horrified by the exam study guide I had presented them with, sent me a list of their own questions. That surprised me a bit but hey, sure, why not. And so, I have incorporated some of these questions into the exam, in a hope that this class at least would know some of the correct answers. Naturally, I was wrong.

Here’s an illustration.

The following three questions refer to the figure below.

1. Identify the cells A, B and D. What is the name of the process C? (4 points)
   1.                                  
   2.                                  
   3.                                  
   4.                                  
2. If the cell A has n chromosomes, the cell B has      chromosomes and the cell D has      chromosomes (2 points).
3. Both cells A and B are collectively known as                    .

Easy peasy, even for those who were absent or asleep 90% of the time. Right?

And here are some unexpected answers, from three different students.

1. Identify the cells A, B and D. What is the name of the process C? (4 points) *
   1.              Luan Zi              
   2.                Jing Zi             
   3.              Shou Jing             
   4.                  ⭗                
   * I'm gonna to write chinese, because I don't how to write in English, you can search internet

Although it is not in my job description, I did that search and should say that the (Mandarin) Chinese terms are correct. Except the symbol ⭗ is not even Chinese (it’s just this student’s doodle of cell D), so it doesn’t count.

2. If the cell A has n chromosomes, the cell B has   r   chromosomes and the cell D has   m   chromosomes (2 points).

I can’t say it is wrong. Just a bit too generic for my liking. Ditto this:

3. Both cells A and B are collectively known as        cells        .

Here’s another one. I lifted this question from the textbook, but you don’t really need to know anything to solve the problem. Or so I thought.

33. It takes just 1 minute for a bacterium to add 30 000 nucleotides to one DNA strand undergoing replication. The rate of replication in this bacterium is   *   nucleotides per second.
* I don’t have a calculator to determine this.