The Lungs And Gas Exchange Flashcards
What is the purpose of our lungs? What happens in them?
We have lungs for gas exchange. We need oxygen from the air (the lungs will take it and transfer it to our blood then our blood’ll give it to body cells that need oxygen for respiration). At the same time, we also need to get a toxic chemical out of our bodies (CO2) and CO2 comes out of our blood and transfers to our lungs and we breath it out
What motion do the lungs take to do gas exchange?
Air is forced into our breathing through the act of breathing and then forced back out (oxygen in, CO2 out)
What is a thorax and what separates it from the abdomen?
The thorax is the upper part of our body, and our abdomen is the lower part of our body. They are separated by a muscle called the diaphragm.
The lungs are surrounded by something called the pleural membrane. What is that and what do it do?
The pleural membrane are two sets of membrane around the lungs. In diagrams, they look like cell walls. They allow the lungs to move more smoothly because they provide a nice elastic surface that allows the lungs to inflate easier during breathing.
Which part of the body protects the lungs from damage?
The rib cage. It’s usually better to break a rib than puncture a lung.
Our body has two pipes connected to our mouths. Only one of them is connected to our nose. Name these two pipes and tell me which one is which.
The oesophagus is our food pipe, it’s connected to our mouth and takes food to the stomach. The trachea is our wind pipe, it’s connected to both the mouth and the nose to allow for breathing
Once the air has passed the trachea, where does it go?
The trachea will send it through one of two tubes (the bronchi- bronchus for singular). Each bronchus lead to one of the two lungs.
After air passes through one or both of the bronchi/bronchus, where does it go?
The bronchi will split into smaller tubes called bronchioles. There are many of them stemming off the bronchus
The bronchioles are connected to the last part of the air’s journey, before it’s exhaled. What are they connected to and what happens in whatever they’re connected to?
The bronchioles are connected to little sacs of air called the alveoli. This is where gas exchange happens (by diffusion).
What are the alveoli surrounded by that without them, the alveoli cannot carry out gas exchange?
Alveoli are surrounded by a network of tiny blood vessels called the capillaries. Basically, gas exchange happens by the alveoli giving a gas to the capillaries and the capillaries will give a gas to the alveoli.
Explain how oxygen is taken from the alveoli and why.
The blood passing next to an alveolus (singular) contains a low amount of oxygen because they’ve just come back to the lungs from the rest of the body. The alveolus contains a high amount of oxygen. So since the conc. of oxygen is higher in the alveolus than it is in the blood, the oxygen will diffuse into the blood
Explain how CO2 is taken from the blood and why
The blood that passes around the alveoli is high in CO2 that our body has produced. And the alveolus is low in CO2. Because the conc. is higher in our blood then in the alveolus, the CO2 will diffuse from our blood into the alveolus where the lungs can breath it out
What happens when our blood passes our body cells and how does this link to gas exchange in our lungs?
When the blood reaches the body cells, oxygen is released from the red blood cells (high concentration) and diffused into the body cells (low concentration). At the same time, CO2 diffuses out of body cells (high conc.) and into the red (well they’re purple now because they lack oxygen) blood cells (low conc.). The red blood cells will then carry the blood with the CO2 back to the lungs where gas exchange will happen and the red blood cells will come back with more oxygen.
How do you calculate breathing rate?
Breathing rate = number of breathes taken / number of minutes
Summarise the exchange process of the alveoli into five bullet point
– lungs need to take in oxygen to transfer to body cells (via blood) and they need to take out CO2 from our body cells (via blood)
– to do so, they use tiny air sacs (alveoli) that are surrounded by a network of blood vessels (capillaries)
– there is higher conc. of oxygen in the alveoli compared to the blood so oxygen diffuses out of alveoli and into blood (which carrie’s oxygen off to body)
– there is a lower conc. of CO2 in the alveoli compared to the blood (high conc.) so CO2 will diffuse out of the blood and into the alveoli
– lungs will get rid of this CO2 by breathing it out through tubes (bronchioles, bronchi and trachea) whilst our blood will take the oxygen and give it to the rest of our body cells
