Lecture 11. More about the Lungs.

Many people seem to be worried about the lack of interest I have been taking in my lectures. I assume this is because of the dragon I drew instead of learning about the assorted pressures related to the lungs. To put you at ease I took notes during my lecture to go with the notes I had printed off prior to attending the lecture. I find that my notes will most likely not be useful in any type of examination unless the exam requires me to list things that the lungs are not. In this case I would probably not need to study, I could merely write a list of objects that lungs are not. For example, lungs are not tables. Lungs are not pencils. Lungs are not the heart.

My lecturer often refers to the lungs as ‘your container’. She does this to make it easier to understand the various pressures associated with the lungs as well as helping the simpler students  understand that the lungs contain more air when they are larger and less when they are smaller. In container terms this translates to: the bigger your container the more air.

I may be one of the few students that does not find the container analogy helpful. Prior to this lecture, when I thought of the lungs I would envision the lungs. Now I have replaced the lungs image with a container, which would be great if it was anatomically correct but it is not. Containers do not belong in the human body. I know this because I drew a picture and the image does not look right. I have inserted an anatomically correct picture of the lungs and a drawing of the lungs as a container to prove my point.

I will now offer an explanation as to why the container is impracticable.

• As you can see, the trachea is in no way connected to the container. If my drawing of a container is accurate (and it is) then the first issue is that there is a missing piece which would be required to get the air into the container.
• The second issue is where would the heart go? As it is currently located near the lungs in order to oxygenate the blood in a normal human there would need to be a way to connect the container to the heart.
• The third issue is without adding extra parts the air would not be able to reach the container or the heart which would result in the death of the entire human species.
• The fourth and final issue that I can be bothered writing about is that there is no container in your body. You have lungs. Just learn about the lungs as they are.