1¬Exchange and Transport of Gases.
Task 1.
The respiratory system.
Figure 1.
Nasal Cavity.
Filters and moistens air inspired via the nostrils, allows exhaled air to be expelled.
Mouth
Moistens air, receives liquid and food, allows exhaled air to be expelled.
Larynx
The voice box. MORE.
Lungs.
The organs in which gaseous exchange occurs.
Bronchi.
The bronchi are the two airways that branch off from the trachea, each entering a lung.
Diaphragm.
A flat muscle separating the thorax from the abdomen. Its contractions work in tandem with the contractions of the intercostal muscles to create the pressure differential in the thorax that forces air into the lungs.
Pharynx.
More.
Trachea.
Carries air from the pharynx to the bronchi.
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Four features of these structures encourage this process in particular:
- The scale and width of the alveolar walls. Alveoli are very small. A single alveolus measures approximately 4.2 x 106 μm3. (Ochs et al., 2004). The walls of the alveoli are also extremely thin, being the width of squamous epithelium cells that they are composed of, and measuring only 10 μm thick (Clegg and Mackean, 1994).
- Large surface area to volume ratio. There are approximately 480 million alveoli in the adult human lung, a figure which increases or decreases in relation to lung size. These numerous alveoli provide a surface area for gaseous exchange of 100-150m2
- The alveoli are surrounded by a network of capillaries. The walls of the alveoli consist of a single layer of epithelial cells. The adjacent capillary walls are also constructed from a single layer of endothelial cells. This allows the diffusion of the pulmonary gases – oxygen and carbon dioxide – to take place more easily than it could across wider cellular
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The trachea has ‘C-shaped rings of cartiledge’ numbering ‘[b]etween sixteen and twenty‘ embedded within its wall (Clegg and Mackean, 1994). These horizontally positioned rings prevent the airway inadvertently closing off. The incomplete rings also allow the trachea to narrow to provide extra room for the esophagus during the process of swallowing food (Taylor, 2014). The inner walls of the trachea ‘consists of ciliated […] columnar epithelial cells’ that contain goblet cells. The function of the goblet cells in the trachea is to produce a ‘sticky mucus’ that traps any inhaled debris. The cilia of the epithelial cells pulse in such a way that the mucus is directed away from the lungs and into the larynx, at which point it is either coughed up or swallowed (Taylor,