KAAs2: The Respiratory System
Today I’m going to talk about how the respiratory system functions. For those of you that don’t know, the respiratory system is the system that provides your body with oxygen from the atmosphere of the Earth.
Let’s start at the beginning of a breath. The lungs rest between breaths. When you inhale, the process begins with your lungs expanding. This causes a vacuum in the lungs, and nature abhors a vacuum. This causes a suction effect through either your mouth or your nose. The air, composed of nitrogen, oxygen, and carbon dioxide passes to your throat, where it splits of from the esophagus and into the trachea, or windpipe. The trachea then, after passing the voice box, goes down to the lungs, where the bronchi split it between the two. The bronchi then send the air down the bronchial chain, which goes to the alveolar ducts and sac. These are what actually filter out the oxygen from the other gasses in the air, and allow it to pass the oxygen into the arteries, which, in turn, goes into the blood system. Meanwhile, carbon dioxide also exits the bloodstream and into the lungs. You lungs then contract back to their normal size, which pushes all of the carbon dioxide and nitrogen back up the way it came, past the voice box, and out of the mouth or the nose. Congratulations, you have just taken a breath!