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blah blahMy name is Urkle Olus Oxygen. I'm going to tell you about a hair raising adventure I had about 157 years ago. Me and my best friend CO2, were in the Structural Bases of Life Research Centre working on a Cray supercomputer, trying to figure out why those huge monstrous humans need us to live. The computer had been working for weeks and it still didn't have the answer. Then CO2 had one of the scariest ideas I have ever heard in my entire life. He suggested to boldly do what no Oxygen or CO2 molecule had done before, to make a record and map the path and make a report on why the human race needs us to live. I suggested that his idea could be tested on someone else, but he insisted that his brain wave was one that only we could execute because of our experience. I know that I personally have travelled through 1,204,621,057 humans but it was always accidental. I would be travelling on my way when all of a sudden the Nitrogen, Oxygen, Argon, Water Vapour, Carbon Dioxide, Neon, Helium, Krypton, Hydrogen, Xenon, and Ozone gasses (all are commonly known as AIR) started to move towards this black hole. Of course we all started screaming and then we closed our eyes till we came out of the black hole again. But this time CO2 and I would keep our eyes open and write down the horrendous experience we had. But this experience I was about to have, took some school work. I had to learn how to write, spell, and to go into depth on the anatomy of the human body. After 16 years in school I graduated with first class honers and my title was a "hyper supergenitic counter clockwise Oxygen atom." Since I am telling you about what happened to me, I think I should go into depth about myself. If you are not a moron, you would know that my atomic number is 8 and my weight is 15.9994 and I make up about 20% of , I forgot the name.........OH!! Earth's atmosphere. My boiling point or the temperature in which I turn into gas is -182.962. Pretty chilly hey. If you are a person who likes science you could tell me that liquid oxygen is magnetic and can be held between the poles of a strong magnet. Cool!! Anyway, I got a little side tracked. A few days before I was to go on the mission, I took out life insurance, just in case what I was about to see gave me a vasospasm, or what we call it, a heart-attack. I also went to a psychiatrist because I was so nervous that when I tried to stand up my knees would knock together. The trauma I was experiencing was incredible, so incredible that it even amazed the leading doctors at that time. There was no cure, the doctors said that I was "self destructing" my "sub atomic nucleic structure" and if I didn't get myself under control, I would collapse because of exhaustion. I took dozens of sleeping pills to get to sleep. In the morning, I had to drink at least three cans of Jolt (twice the caffeine) to keep me awake. Around lunch time, I would get out the Molson Canadian Ice (fungus pea) just to keep myself settled down. You could say I was "a living hell." Then the day came. It came with such swiftness that it just about knocked me over, but it came. It was the day that I was to do what no sane oxygen atom had done before, to keep my eyes open and record what happens to me when I first go into that "black hole", sorry the nose. You see I got a got a lot smarter since I went to school. Just befor I go on my trip, I want to talk about the things that I will write down. I will be writing down notes as I see things happen. I will be writing in the present tense, not the past. I will be doing that because that is what will be happening. As you may know, this is the first time in my life that I will be doing this so I might get scared but please stay with me. When I see things I will expand on what I see because that is why I went to school. So here we go!! As I enter the nose I see that the air enters in two streams, because the nostrils (the two openings in the nose) are divided by the septum ,which is a thin wall of cartilage (tough tissue) and bones. I see the nostrils contain hairs which aid in filtering dirt out of the air. This guy had a lot of dirt on the sides of his nostrils so I knew he didn't pick his nose. From the nostrils I enter the nasal passage, which lies above the mouth. It was getting a little bit dark so I decided to turn my flashlight on. I saw above the nasal passage three shelflike bones called turbinates which were covered with mucus membranes which moisten the air. While looking at those structures, I observed that these bones help warm the inhaled air also. Looking closely at the mucus membrane, I see they are covered with microscopic, hairlike projections called cilia. They were waving back and forth constantly, moving dust, bacteria, and fluids from the nose to the throat for swallowing. Shifting my gaze to the highest part of the nasal cavity, I could see the olfactory nerve receptors lying in a small piece of mucus membrane about as big as a dime. These receptors give the human his sense of smell by generating nerve impulses in response to chemicals in the air. One thing that really struck me is that the main thing the nasal passage does is to warm the air and add moisture to it before it goes any farther. From the nasal cavity, I go into the pharynx, which is a cone-shaped tube that connects the nose and mouth with the voice box and oesophagus. It looks about 5 inches long and has muscular walls lined with mucus membrane. As I'm going down, I see a flap of cartilage called the epiglottis which is open. I guess I will be going through it. Now I begin to see the Larynx, or the "Adam's apple," sometimes called the voice box because it contains the vocal cords. While I keep observing, I notice that the larynx is shaped like a box, and it has a supporting structure made up of nine sections of cartilage. The thyroidcartilage, in front, and the cricoid cartilage, in the back, which look to me as the most important structures. The thyroid cartilage consists of two wing-shaped plates that meet to form the projection called the "Adam's apple." These plates make up the side walls of the larynx. The ring-shaped cricoid cartilage forms the back wall of the larynx. Now I begin to see the vocal cords, two bands of elastic tissue that lie along the sides of the glottis wall. These muscles can stretch the cords, change their shape or bring them close together. When the cords are close together, air rushing between them produce sound. The shape and stretch in the cords determines the pitch (highness or lowness) of the voice. The shape of the throat, nose, and mouth determines the quality of a person's voice. Now I begin to enter the t-t-trachea. It looks to me like a tube reinforced with cartilaginous rings to prevent collapse. I look closely and notice that the trachea is lined with cilia. Cilia look like hair. They are always in constant motion moving back and forth, and carry dust or dirt taken in with the air upward toward the mouth. The dust is mixed with mucus and the mucus even traps more particles in the air. I can hear the swishing of the cilia as they move back and forth. As I am going down they were getting pretty thick and I was weaving in and out of them. As I was doing that I could see hundreds of dirt particles stuck to the mucus that the upper hairs had missed. The farther down I go, the smaller the dirt particles get! At the lower end, the trachea divides into two branches called bronchi. One extends to each lung. These too have cilia and mucus in them. One thing I am noticing is that there are more special cells called alveolar macrophages which are engulfing the particles and carrying them to the mucus or destroying them. Now the bronchi tube I am in begins to divide into countless small bronchial tubes and these are dividing into even smaller tubes called bronchioles. While this is going on I am going to go over the mechanics of breathing. Inspiration, or the intake of air, occurs when the chest cavity is increased in size and therefore decreased in pressure. The enlargement of the chest cavity involves the following movements: (1) The rib muscles contract and pull the ribs upward and outwards and can be aided with the shoulder muscles. (2) The muscles of the resting, dome-shaped diaphragm contract. This action straightens and lowers the diaphragm and increases the size of the chest cavity below. (3) The abdominal muscles relax and allow compression of the abdominal organs by the diaphragm. The enlargement of the chest cavity results in decreasing of the air pressure within. In an equalizing movement, air passes through the trachea and inflates the lungs. Expiration, or the expelling of air from the lungs, results when the chest cavity is reduced in size.
Approximate Word count = 6505
Approximate Pages = 26
(250 words per page double spaced)
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