The Lungs

By: Steven, Jessica, Annie

My lungs are made up of millions of elastic like sacs which fill up and let our air.

My lungs can hold as much air as a basketball.

Air comes into my body through my nose and mouth.  My lungs give back fresh oxygen to my blood. About 20 times a minute, you breathe in.

After trading is done, my blood goes back to my heart to work again.

So every time I inhale (breathe air in) and every time I exhale (breathe out), I know my lungs are working hard for me.

The air has a long journey to get to your lungs. It flows down through the windpipe, past the voice box or vocal cords, to where the lowermost ribs meet the center of your chest. There, your windpipe divides into two tubes which lead to the two lungs which fill most of your ribcage.

 Inside each of your sponge-like lungs, tubes, called bronchi, branch into even smaller tubes much like the branches of a tree. At the end of these tubes are millions of tiny bubbles or sacs called aleoli. (The tiny sacs in the lungs where needed oxygen from the air moves into the blood stream and the carbon dioxide (waste) from the blood moves out into the lungs (to be exhaled). 

Spread out flat, all the air sacs in the lungs of an adult would cover an area about the third of a tennis court.

In an adult, the two lungs together weigh about 2 1/2 pounds.

Your lungs contain almost 1500 miles of airways and over 300 million alveoli.

Your lungs are in your chest, and they are so large that they take up most of the space in there. 

You have two lungs, but they aren't the same size the way your eyes or nostrils are. Instead, the lung on the left side of your body is a bit smaller than the lung on the right. This extra space on the left leaves room for your heart.

Brain Pop

[PDF] lung pic

Click here to go to the Yuckiest Site on the Internet!