The Digestive System Lab

1. One of the main "take aways" from the activity was learning the length of these digestive organs. From afar, these digestive organs do not seem excessively long because they are capable of fitting in our somewhat compact bodies. However when these digestive organs are spread out, some of them are as long as a full tennis court. This amazing fact demonstrates how much more there is to learn about the digestive system, piquing my interest even more about the anatomy of the human body.

DIGESTIVE ORGAN	COLOR and LENGTH (CM)
MOUTH	GREEN AND 11.5 CM
ESOPHAGUS	BLUE AND 46.2 CM
STOMACH	RED AND 17.9 CM
SMALL INTESTINE	YARN AND 696 CM
LARGE INTESTINE	GOLD AND 174 CM
TOTAL	945.6 CM

2. The length of my digestive system is about three times more than my height. The digestive system is able to fit in my abdomen because such organs are rolled up so much that their width is longer than their length.

3. I believe that it takes about a day for food to travel through my entire digestive system. The actual time it takes to digest food, however, is 6 to 8 hours. Factors that influence the time to digest are chewing, eating with digestive limits, intaking liquids and condiments, and the frequency of meals.

4. Although digestion and absorption are two functions in the digestive system, digestion is the breaking down of food into smaller pieces and absorption is the taking in of nutrients, water, etc. Both processes occur in the stomach; however, absorption also occurs in the large intestine.

5. From this unit on the digestive unit, I am interested in learning about how our body recognizes food poisoning and what our body does to respond to the food poisoning.