The Lungs!!!!

So since not a whole lot goes on in my life except school I thought I would share some of my favorite things with you all.

I metioned in my earlier post that my favorite organ in the body are the lungs. They actually are fairly large adn extend from the bottom of your rib cage all the way up under your clavicle (in a way when you put your hand on the top of your shoulders close to your neck your lungs extend that far up. They are very smooth and slimy and begin with a single esophagus that branches into two branches (L & R) then branches another 23 times in order to reach the most basic level where air exchange takes place into the blood stream.

So I'm sure you're wondering why they're my favorite. Does anyone love to pop the air-bubble-packaging that comes with vases etc... and you can pop them one by one. Well.... I love that stuff and the lungs kind of feel like hundreds of little tiny air-poppies, but of course they don't pop, all at the same time being extremely slimy and cold (love it). They are actually only 10% hard tissue and are 90% air when filled, but when you touch them they feel like a soft solid.

When I was at USU we actually blew up some pig lungs with an air pump, and they are actually quite large and blow up like balloons! AMAZING! I hope you love the lungs as much as I do.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G3pfeXULyv0&feature=related#watch-main-area

The above link is to watch an inflation of Pig lungs, enjoy!

Some Fun Facts About the Lungs

• The right lung is slightly larger than the left.
• Hairs in your nose help to clean the air we breathe as well as warm it.
• The highest recorded "sneeze speed" is 99 miles per hour!
• The surface area of the lungs is roughly the same size as a tennis court.
• If placed end to end, capillaries would extend 960 miles.
• We lose half a liter of water every day through breathing.
• A person at rest breathes between 12-15 times a minute.
• The breathing rate is faster in children and women than it is in men.

The "Small" Intestines

So my cadaver lab is about as exciting as it gets around here and I thought I would tell you a little about what I am doing there. So for those of you who don't know a cadaver is a dead person and I have a group of 4 for my cadaver and we are doing a complete dissection of the human body. Let me just tell you that the human body is the most amazing creation on this earth. It is phenomenal how intricate it is and how something that looks like a little string can be a nerve that is completely responsible for all of your gastric functioning and more.

So far my group and I have dissected the back and all of the musculature (this involves skinning and removing each muscle layer by layer). The Chest's musculature and the thoracic cage (this involves cutting open the chest with a bone saw), the lungs (which are my favorite organ - like the way they feel), the heart, the entire abdominal cavity including the liver, stomach, etc... and one of the most fascinating and smelly organs of the body - THE INTESTINES. I'm sure you all know that the small intestine is actually 22 ft long (not small) and my classmates removed theirs and stretched it out along the room and you better believe that there was 22 ft in that little body. It is really funny because my teacher had to warn us NOT TO USE THE INTESTINES TO PLAY JUMP-ROPE. Of course we weren't doing that, but some previous class had and I guess that's just not cool, I was tempted though.