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Experiment Pulmonary Surfactant

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The reason this experiment was performed was to see what surfactant does and really is. As said by Mallinath Chakraborty, “Pulmonary surfactant is a complex mixture of specific lipids, proteins and carbohydrates, which is produced in the lungs by type II alveolar epithelial cells. The mixture is surface active and acts to decrease surface tension at the air–liquid interface of the alveoli.” Within our respiratory system our lungs have alveoli which contain a surfactant that help with water. Without the surfactant in the alveoli the lungs will collapse with water, you would basically suffocate by the water in your body without the alveoli producing the surfactant. Therefore, we conducted an experiment with milk varying from whole milk and …show more content…

Scientific American says that “In a liquid, the molecules (small individual particles that can have positive and negative charges on their surfaces) can, just like magnets, attract and repel one another. In the case of a water molecule surrounded on all sides by other water molecules there is roughly the same amount of pulling and pushing force”. With the whole milk at 1 minute with just food coloring the circumference was 1 centimeter, at 2 minute it was at 2.5 centimeters wide and at 3 minutes the width was 3.5 centimeters. The half and half milk at 1 minute the width was at .7, at 2 minute the width was 1cm. 3 minutes the width was at 1.4. This shows the expansion of the food coloring and how rapid it is compared to the half and half. This means my hypothesis was incorrect and the fact that the soap made the color burst throughout the milk. My thought was the milk was to thick which would make the color or the dye just stay underneath the surface. This experiment is a great one to do just to see the way a natural created surfactant is produced and functions experiment in class to show the result of surfactant, and to get a better understanding of what it does within your respiratory system. This is a representation of the bodies alveoli, and how it works involuntarily without us even knowing. With a body that is primarily composed of water and to have such a simple function with our lungs

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