Unit 7 Reflection

In this unit, we learned about the muscular system.  There are a lot of different joints and defining characteristics for them.  For example, there are levers, which is a rigid object that rotates around a fixed point called a fulcrum.  Rotation occurs when effort overcomes resistance.  There are first class levers, second class levers and third class levers. Joints are the point of a connection between two bones or elements of a skeleton especially if it allows motion.  Ligaments are bone to bone, and tendons are bone to muscle.  The functional classification of joints are synarthroses, or immovable joints, amphiarthroses, or slightly movable joints, and diarthroses, or freely movable joints. There are fibrous joints which are generally immovable, cartilaginous joints, which are immovable or slightly movable, and synovial joints which are freely movable.  There are 17 different directional terms and joint movements that we learned about. For example, flexion is the movement that decreases the angle between two bones and extension is the movement that increases the angle between two bones. Muscles are very important in our bodies because they do a lot of things, like the movement of bones, maintaining posture and body position, stabilizing joints, and heat generation.  There are a few properties of muscle tissue, excitability, or the ability to receive and respond to stimuli, contractility, or the ability to shorten when stimulated, extensibility, or the ability to be stretched, and elasticity, or the ability to recoil to resting length.  Connective tissues components are fascia (thin sheets of fibrous connective tissue that holds muscle fibers together), epimysium (fascia that surrounds the entire muscle), perimysium (separates muscles into bundles), endomysium (fascia that surrounds each muscle fiber), and tendon (a cord of dense regular connective tissue composed of collagen that attaches muscle to periosteum to bone).  Origin is the immovable end of the muscle and insertion is the movable end of the muscle, when a muscle contracts the insertion is moved towards the origin.  We learned about skeletal muscle, and that its composed of thousands of bundles of muscle fibers.  We did a chicken dissection, where we located all of the main muscles and labeled them. We wrote reflections on our blogs. My Chicken Dissection Reflection.  Mr. Orre taught us about the three different types of muscle fibers.  There slow twitch fibers which are slow oxidative, fast twitch fibers which are fast oxidative, and fast twitch fibers which are fast glycolytic.  The general effects of exercise on muscles is it helps to increase metabolism, strengthens bones, increases muscular endurance, helps prevent injuries, and it increases coordination and balance.  Hypertrophy is when cells increase in volume due to move myofibrils, and hyperplasia is when cells remain the same in size, but they increase in number.  We made a stop motion video to show how muscle contractions work. Our Muscle Contraction Video To keep our muscles healthy it is important to exercise regularly, eat healthy, don't smoke, know basic first aid, and you should train aerobically and anaerobically. We also were taught about performance enhancement substances and how it effects our bodies.  This unit, we learned a lot about the muscular system, and it helped me understand it a lot more.

Picture from our chicken dissection

Human Growth Hormone

Performance enhancing substances are a manufactured product for oral insertion, intranasal application or inhalation containing components that contain a stimulant, amino acid, hormone, precursor, etc.  Human growth hormone is a hormone that has a anabolic effect and improves muscle mass and performance.  There are  a few consequences, like joint pain, muscle weakness, and carpal tunnel syndrome.

Chicken Disection Analysis

In this Lab we dissected a chicken and we will be locating the main muscles.  We began by removing the skin from the chest.  We found the pectoralis major and the pectoralis minor which is right under it.  Next we removed the skin on its back and found the trapezius and latissimus dorsi.  Next we Removed the skin on the chickens wings and found the deltoid, biceps brachii and the triceps humeralis. We also found the flexor carpi ulnaris and the brachiordialis.  Next we removed the skin on the chickens thigh and found the sartorius, iliotibialis, semimembranosus, semitendinous, quadriceps, and the gastrocnemius.  We also found the preens longs and the tibias anterior.  The pectoralis major helps pull the wing ventrally and the pectoralis minor lifts the wing dorsally.  The trapezius helps shrug the shoulders and the latissimus dorsi extends or pulls the wing.  The deltoid helps raise the upper wing, the biceps brachii helps bend the wing, and the triceps humeralis extends the wing.  The flexor carpi unlearns flexes the hand, and the brachiordialis helps pull the hand back. The sartorius flexes the thigh, the iliotibialis extends the thigh, the biceps femurs flexes the leg and the semimembranosus extends the thigh also.  Semitendinosis extends the thigh, quadriceps femurs extends the lower left, and the gastrocnemius is used for standing on your toes.  The preens longs extends the foot and the tibias anterior flexes the foot.  The biceps brachii is an example of an origin, and origins are the attachment site of the muscles tendon to a stationary bone.  Insertion is the attachment site of a tendon to a moveable bone. There are a lot of muscles in the chicken that are pretty similar to the muscles we have.  For example the deltoid what is on the center top of the shoulder of the chicken and of humans which helps to raise your upper arm or in chickens their wing.   The trapezius is muscles that run perpendicular from the backbone to the shoulder of the bird and pull the shoulder back, but in humans they're split into two parts.  The triceps humeralis is the muscle on the inferior side of the upper wing or arm in birds and humans, and it extends the arm or in chickens the wing.

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Unit 6 Reflection

Owl Pellet lab

Skeleton 

This unit was about the skeletal system. We learned about the different bones, their functions, bone disorders, and what they're made of. The bones support the body, protects our soft organs, stores minerals, blood cell formation, and when attached to skeletal muscles, movement. We also learned that there are two types of bone tissue, compact bone and spongy bone.  Compact bone is homogenous and spongy bone is small needle like pieces of bone, and has many open spaces. Mr. Orre taught us that Ca and P are the minerals that make bones hard, and collagen makes them strong and allows flexibility. Osteoblasts and osteoclasts are apart of a process called bone remodeling. Osteoclasts destroy bone cells, they break down bone for remodeling and calcium release, osteoblasts are bone forming cells. Bones are classified by their shape, there are long bones, short bones, flat bones and irregular bones. Some of the bone disorders we learned about were osteoporosis (porous bones), scoliosis (curvature of spine), Kyphosis (Curvature of thoracic spine), lordosis (curvature of lumbar spine), and rickets (softening or weakening of bones).  Ossification is the process by which bone forms, and it begins 6-7 months before birth and continues until your about 25 years old. In the future I would like to learn more about treatments to bone disorders.

Bone slide

Owl Pellet Lab

humerus

We did an Owl Pellet lab, where we dissected owl pellets and tried to figure out what type of animal the owl ate.  We had to look at the bones we found and try to match them to other animal bones. Our owl pellet was 5.69 grams, 9 cm long and 2 cm wide.  In it we found two skulls and a lot of very small bones. The skulls were 3.5 cm long, 2.5 cm wide and the lower jaw was 2.5 cm long and 1 cm wide. Looking at the charts and information we were given, we decided that it was a vole.  The first thing we saw was the humerus, the bone has a part that pokes out and it matched the picture we had of a vole's humerus. Then the skull has a curve right after the front of the mouth and then in the back there were teeth and the vole was the only animal that has a skull with this shape. Also the lower jaw we found has the same shape as a vole.  The ribs that we found in our owl pellet are very similar to ribs on a human, they are the same shape. The back bones we found were similar to human back bones because they lined up like human spines do.  We found a bone which we thought was the femur and it was pretty similar to the human femur, it was the same shape and had the ball in socket joint. Some things we found different was the humerus, the bone poked out at a point and the human bone doesn't do that. Also the tibia and fibula were reversed, in the human skeleton the tibia is bigger than the fibula but in the vole, the fibula is bigger than the tibia and they were also connected. Another difference we found was in the skull, it has very big eye sockets and the mouth is a lot different. Overall we learned a lot about the differences in these bones and human bones, and also it was interesting to see what owls eat and to take apart the owl pellets.

tibia and fibula 

  

skull and mandible

Unit 5 Reflection

Fed State Poster

In this unit we learned about the digestive system, metabolism, diabetes, endocrine system and the lymphatic system.  We learned that there are six basic functions of digestion, ingestion, secretion, mixing/propulsion, digesting, absorption, defecation. The digestive system has many accessory organs and we found out the pathway that food takes. ATP is the universal carrier for metabolism and it can be generated by the oxidation of glucose, fatty acids and amino acids. It takes three stages for energy to be extracted from food. We learned more about diabetes and what causes it.  Diabetes is when your body cant properly control blood glucose levels and you body cant make enough insulin, and it cant respond to it. Type 1 diabetes is when the body doesn't produce insulin at all and they must take insulin by injecting it. Type 2 diabetes begins with insulin resistance and is more common then type 1 diabetes.  The endocrine system controls the processes involved in movement and physiological equilibrium.  We learned about the organs in the endocrine system and their hormones. We were taught about the lymphatic system and how it is involved in immunity, lipid absorption and fluid recovery.  Lymph is a clear colorless fluid that flows throughout lymphatic vessels.  The main organs of the lymphatic system are Lymph nodes, thymus, tonsils and spleen. In this unit we did a lab where we measured out our digestive tracts with strings, and we found out that it is a lot longer then we thought it was.

strings across the top are digestive tracts

The Digestion System Lab

In this lab we measured out the length of each part of the digestive system and at the end we added up all of the lengths and got the length of our digestive tracts. The main takeaways I got from this activity is that the intestines are a lot longer than I imagined.  With all of the digestive lengths put together it was very long.  For our small intestine we multiplied our height times 4, which is pretty long so for it to be able to fit in our abdomen it needs to be very bunched up and folded.  The small intestine is very long but it is not as wide as the large intestine.  The large intestine is much wider than the small intestine but it is shorter, for this your large intestine was about your height so we used out height and measured out the yarn.  My guess to how long it takes for food to move through your entire digestive system would be about 8 hours.  I looked it up and it says it takes between 24-72 hours for food to move through the entire system.  My guess was very off, but a big factor to how long it takes is the type of food it is.  Digestion is different from absorption because digestion is breaking down food into smaller pieces and absorption is taking the needed nutrients. Your intestines are where absorption takes place and digestion involves the mouth, esophagus, stomach, small intestine, large intestine, liver, gall bladder, pancreas, anal cavity and the anus.  I don't have any questions about digestion, I want to learn more about how different people can't digest foods, but others can like for example celiac disease.