Respiration +Breathing! How we work, play and sleep!!

Ingredients for energy! We’ve learned in digestion that food is absorbed into our blodstream and carried around to all the cells in our body! The process that releases energy from this food is RESPIRATION.

Respiration is the release of energy from food. The equation for respiration in words is: Glucose + Oxygen Carbon dioxide + Water + Energy

There are two types of Respiration

Aerobic Respiration needs oxygen to release energy from food. Come on Oxygen I need you to release energy!

Anaerobic Respiration does not use oxygen to release energy from food. Sorry mate don’t need you I’m going in for Anaerobic Respiration! Sniff…..I Feel so unwanted!

How does Oxygen get to our Cells?? Oxygen is carried by blood to all cells of the body. This Is great we’re just hitching a ride to the cells on these red blood cells! Here we come!

Aerobic Respiration Takes place in ALL the living cells in the body aswell as in most animal and plant cells. We all respire Aerobically!

Anaerobic Respiration Some living things can get energy from food without using oxygen. Haha I don’t need oxygen to respire I can do it Anaerobically and still release energy!!

Remember! Much less energy is released from food by Anaerobic Respiration than by Aerobic Respiration. I miss Oxygen, I just can’t give off all my energy without him!

Examples of anaerobic respiration Yeast converts sugars to alcohol in “Fermentation” – this produces alcohol for drinks such as beers and wine!

See for yourself!!! Have you ever noticed what happens when you breathe on glass?? Yes as you can see from your experiment water vapour forms on it! We can make sure this is water by using cobalt chloride paper!

Did you know ??? When you get a cramp whilst exercising it is caused by the acid that your cells produce when they respire anaerobically (without oxygen). the only reason they do this is because your body needs to produce so much energy while you exercise that not enough oxygen reaches the cells on time. To try to sort this out you start breathing fast and get out of breath as your lungs are trying to take in as much oxygen as possible!!

Now to test for Carbon Dioxide! Limewater turns cloudy in the presence of Carbon Dioxide. What happened when you breathed into limewater?? What does this tell you??

That brings us nicely on to….. The breathing system…how we take in oxygen and deliver it to cells!

Breathing As you can see from the Equation Oxygen and food are the two important things our cells need to give us energy. We’ve learned how the food gets to our cells by digestion. The oxygen gets to our cells by breathing!

So where does the air go when we breathe it in?

So what happens in each part??

Nose and mouth These are the openings the air can enter through!

Pharynx This is the scientific name for your throat area.

Trachea This is the tube that leads into your lungs. It is very strong and is kept open by Rings of Cartilage. If we didn’t have rings of cartilage what do you think might happen??

Bronchus As we have two lungs our Trachea divides to branch into each one. These two branches are called Bronchi.

How do you think the Bronchi fill up all our lungs??

Bronchioles To spread out through all our lungs the bronchi break up to even smaller little branches called BRONCHIOLES.

Alveoli The final place the air we breathe in goes to in our lung is the ALVEOLI.

It is in the Alveoli that Carbon Dioxide is brought into the lungs to be exhaled and oxygen is brought into the body for respiration. This is called Gas exchange. Why do you think it is called this?

These are tiny little sacs that look like bunches of grapes. By gosh!These things look just like a bunch of grapes!

In fact this is how they got the name Alveolus from the Greek word meaning “bunch of Grapes”!

Tiny, tiny blood vessels known as capillaries carry blood to and from the alveoli and allow the gases to pass in and out.

Did you know?? If you joined all the capillaries in your lung alone end to end they would travel up and down Ireland a few times!!!

Another amazing fact! If you took out you alveoli and cut them open to spread out they would cover a tennis court!!

Lets Learn how we breathe!!

See for yourself! Put your hands under your ribs. Take a deep breath in. What do you notice happening?? This called the INHALE.

Keep your hands under you ribs as you breathe out. What do you notice happening? This is called the EXHALE.

So what’s going on?? Our rib cage is around our lungs to protect them. When we take in air the rib cage seems to lift up to give more room for all the air.

This is able to happen because the INTERCOSTAL MUSCLES contract between the lungs and the DIAPHRAGM pushes up and down.

We can also see this with the bell jar!!