Changes in me

By: FRANCESKA

Table of contents

The 5 Senses

The Brain

The Lungs

The Heart

The Liver

The Stomach

The Large Intestines

The Small Intestines

The Kidneys

Your Personalities

MY PERSONALITIES

Link to Peer Pressure videos

Peer pressure images

What happens to your body when it is under pressure?

Friends~

Making choices

Advertisement

How our Friends Influence us

My personality poem

The 5 Senses

What are our 5 senses ?

Taste

Vision

Hearing

Touch

Smell

Taste

Our sense of taste comes from the taste buds on our tongue. These buds are also called papillae. But, the sense of smell also affects our taste.

The tongue is only able to taste four separate flavors: salty, sweet, sour and bitter. But, you might ask, how come different sweet foods taste different if there are only four flavors? That is because a combination of sweet and salty could be your favorite candy. And the combination of sweet and bitter could be the chips in your chocolate chip cookie. Everything you taste is one or more combinations of these four flavors.

Not only can your tongue taste, but it also picks up texture and temperature in your food like creamy, crunchy, hot or dry.

Sight

Our sense of sight is all dependent upon our eyes. A lens at the front of the eyeball helps to focus images onto the retina at the back of the eye. The retina is covered with two types of light sensitive cells - the cones and the rods. The cones allow us to see color and the rods allow us to see better at night and also aid us in our peripheral vision. All of this information is sent to the brain along the optic nerve.

The images sent are actually upside down and our brain makes sense of what it receives by turning the vision right side up. The brain also uses the images from two eyes to create a 3D (three dimensional) image. This allows us to perceive depth.

Some people are not able to tell red colors from green colors. This is called color blindness. Others, through injury or other conditions, have little to no sight at all.

Touch

The sense of touch is spread through the whole body. Nerve endings in the skin and in other parts of the body send information to the brain. There are four kinds of touch sensations that can be identified: cold, heat, contact, and pain. Hair on the skin increase the sensitivity and can act as an early warning system for the body. The fingertips have a greater concentration of nerve endings.

People who are blind can use their sense of touch to read Braille - a kind of writing that uses a series of bumps to represent different letters of the alphabets.

Smell

Our nose is the organ that we use to smell. The inside of the nose is lined with something called the mucous membranes. These membranes have smell receptors connected a special nerve called the olfactory nerve. Smells are made of fumes of various substances. The smell receptors react with the molecules of these fumes and then send these messages to the brain. Our sense of smell is capable of identifying seven types of sensations. These are put into these categories: camphor, musk, flower, mint, ether, acrid, or putrid. The sense of smell is sometimes lost for a short time when a person has a cold. Dogs have a more sensitive sense of smell than man.

In addition to being the organ for smell, the nose also cleans the air we breathe and impacts the sound of our voice. Try plugging your nose while you talk.

Smell is also an aide in the ability to taste.

Hearing

Our ears, which help us hear, are made of two separate parts; the outer ear and the inner ear. The outer ear is the part that others see. It works like a cup to catch sound as it travels past our heads. This part is made of cartilage and skin. From here, sound travels to the tympanic membrane and then onto the inner ear by the three smallest bones in your body. The inner ear is also called the cochlea and is a spiral shaped tube which translates vibrations into sound and sends that message to the brain through the auditory nerve. The brain uses the sounds from both the left and the right ear to determine distance and direction of sounds.

The Brain

How do you remember the way to your friend's house? Why do your eyes blink without you ever thinking about it? Where do dreams come from? Your brain is in charge of these things and a lot more.

In fact, your brain is the boss of your body. It runs the show and controls just about everything you do, even when you're asleep. Not bad for something that looks like a big, wrinkly, gray sponge.

Your brain has many different parts that work together. We're going to talk about these five parts, which are key players on the brain team:

-cerebrum (say: suh-REE-brum)

-cerebellum (say: sair-uh-BELL-um)

-brain stem

-pituitary (say: puh-TOO-uh-ter-ee) gland

-hypothalamus (say: hy-po-THAL-uh-mus)

Cerebrum

The biggest part of the brain is the cerebrum. The cerebrum makes up 85% of the brain's weight, and it's easy to see why. The cerebrum is the thinking part of the brain and it controls your voluntary muscles — the ones that move when you want them to. So you can't dance — or kick a soccer ball — without your cerebrum.

When you're thinking hard, you're using your cerebrum. You need it to solve math problems, figure out a video game, and draw a picture. Your memory lives in the cerebrum — both short-term memory (what you ate for dinner last night) and long-term memory (the name of that roller-coaster you rode on two summers ago). The cerebrum also helps you reason, like when you figure out that you'd better do your homework now because your mom is taking you to a movie later.

The cerebrum has two halves, with one on either side of the head. Scientists think that the right half helps you think about abstract things like music, colors, and shapes. The left half is said to be more analytical, helping you with math, logic, and speech. Scientists do know for sure that the right half of the cerebrum controls the left side of your body, and the left half controls the right side.

Cerebellum

Next up is the cerebellum. The cerebellum is at the back of the brain, below the cerebrum. It's a lot smaller than the cerebrum at only 1/8 of its size. But it's a very important part of the brain. It controls balance, movement, and coordination (how your muscles work together).

Because of your cerebellum, you can stand upright, keep your balance, and move around. Think about a surfer riding the waves on his board. What does he need most to stay balanced? The best surfboard? The coolest wetsuit? Nope — he needs his cerebellum!

Brain Stem

Another brain part that's small but mighty is the brain stem. The brain stem sits beneath the cerebrum and in front of the cerebellum. It connects the rest of the brain to the spinal cord, which runs down your neck and back. The brain stem is in charge of all the functions your body needs to stay alive, like breathing air, digesting food, and circulating blood.

Part of the brain stem's job is to control your involuntary muscles — the ones that work automatically, without you even thinking about it. There are involuntary muscles in the heart and stomach, and it's the brain stem that tells your heart to pump more blood when you're biking or your stomach to start digesting your lunch. The brain stem also sorts through the millions of messages that the brain and the rest of the body send back and forth. Whew! It's a big job being the brain's secretary!

The Lungs

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.

Your lungs are protected by your rib cage, which is made up of 12 sets of ribs. These ribs are connected to your spine in your back and go around your lungs to keep them safe. Beneath the lungs is the diaphragm (say: DY-uh-fram), a dome-shaped muscle that works with your lungs to allow you to inhale (breathe in) and exhale (breathe out) air.

You can't see your lungs, but it's easy to feel them in action: Put your hands on your chest and breathe in very deeply. You will feel your chest getting slightly bigger. Now breathe out the air, and feel your chest return to its regular size. You've just felt the power of your lungs!

The Heart

Your heart is really a muscle. It's located a little to the left of the middle of your chest, and it's about the size of your fist. There are lots of muscles all over your body — in your arms, in your legs, in your back, even in your behind.

But the heart muscle is special because of what it does. The heart sends blood around your body. The blood provides your body with the oxygen and nutrients it needs. It also carries away waste.

Your heart is sort of like a pump, or two pumps in one. The right side of your heart receives blood from the body and pumps it to the lungs. The left side of the heart does the exact opposite: It receives blood from the lungs and pumps it out to the body.

The Liver

The liver helps you by taking toxins out of your blood. Wait! Why do you have toxins in your blood in the first place? Sometimes your body produces them as part of its normal function, like breaking down protein, a component in foods such as meat and nuts.

The liver also cleans blood that has just been enriched with vitamins and minerals during digestion. After you've eaten something, the vitamins, minerals, and other nutrients from the food pass from the intestine into the blood. Before going out to the rest of the body, the nutrient-rich blood makes a stop at the liver.

The liver processes the good stuff into forms that the rest of the body can use. Waste or stuff your body doesn't need can be carried by bile back into the intestine and out of the body when you poop. Other waste processed by the liver goes through your blood to your kidneys and out in your pee.

And, if you ever accidentally ate something that was harmful, your liver would try to break it down and clear it out of your system. But don't put your liver to the test! Steer clear of poisons and other harmful stuff.

Stomach

Your stomach, which is attached to the end of the esophagus, is a stretchy sack shaped like the letter J. It has three important jobs:

-to store the food you've eaten

-to break down the food into a liquidy mixture

-to slowly empty that liquidy mixture into the small intestine

The stomach is like a mixer, churning and mashing together all the small balls of food that came down the esophagus into smaller and smaller pieces. It does this with help from the strong muscles in the walls of the stomach and gastric (say: GAS-trik) juices that also come from the stomach's walls. In addition to breaking down food, gastric juices also help kill bacteria that might be in the eaten food.

Small intestines

The small intestine (say: in-TESS-tin) is a long tube that's about 1½ inches to 2 inches (about 3.5 to 5 centimeters) around, and it's packed inside you beneath your stomach. If you stretched out an adult's small intestine, it would be about 22 feet long (6.7 meters) — that's like 22 notebooks lined up end to end, all in a row!

The small intestine breaks down the food mixture even more so your body can absorb all the vitamins, minerals, proteins, carbohydrates, and fats. The grilled chicken on your pizza is full of proteins — and a little fat — and the small intestine can help extract them with a little help from three friends: the pancreas (say: PAN-kree-uss), liver, and gallbladder.

Those organs send different juices to the first part of the small intestine. These juices help to digest food and allow the body to absorb nutrients. The pancreas makes juices that help the body digest fats and protein. A juice from the liver called bile helps to absorb fats into the bloodstream. And the gallbladder serves as a warehouse for bile, storing it until the body needs it.

Your food may spend as long as 4 hours in the small intestine and will become a very thin, watery mixture. It's time well spent because, at the end of the journey, the nutrients from your pizza, orange, and milk can pass from the intestine into the blood. Once in the blood, your body is closer to benefiting from the complex carbohydrates in the pizza crust, the vitamin C in your orange, the protein in the chicken, and the calcium in your milk.

Large intestines

At 3 or 4 inches around (about 7 to 10 centimeters), the large intestine is fatter than the small intestine and it's almost the last stop on the digestive tract. Like the small intestine, it is packed into the body, and would measure 5 feet (about 1.5 meters) long if you spread it out.

The large intestine has a tiny tube with a closed end coming off it called the appendix (say: uh-PEN-dix). It's part of the digestive tract, but it doesn't seem to do anything, though it can cause big problems because it sometimes gets infected and needs to be removed.

Like we mentioned, after most of the nutrients are removed from the food mixture there is waste left over — stuff your body can't use. This stuff needs to be passed out of the body. Can you guess where it ends up? Well, here's a hint: It goes out with a flush.

Before it goes, it passes through the part of the large intestine called the colon (say: CO-lun), which is where the body gets its last chance to absorb the water and some minerals into the blood. As the water leaves the waste product, what's left gets harder and harder as it keeps moving along, until it becomes a solid. Yep, it's poop (also called stool or a bowel movement).

Kidneys

One of the main jobs of the kidneys is to filter the waste out of the blood. How does the waste get in your blood? Well, your blood delivers nutrients to your body. Chemical reactions occur in the cells of your body to break down the nutrients. Some of the waste is the result of these chemical reactions. Some is just stuff your body doesn't need because it already has enough. The waste has to go somewhere; this is where the kidneys come in.

First, blood is carried into the kidneys by the renal artery(anything in the body related to the kidneys is called "renal"). The average person has 1 to 1½ gallons of blood circulating through his or her body. The kidneys filter that blood as many as 400 times a day! More than 1 million tiny filters inside the kidneys remove the waste. These filters, called nephrons (say: NEH-fronz), are so small you can see them only with a high-powered microscope.

Your personalities

The importance in celebrating uniqueness in ourselves and others. There are many things that make us special and unique, especially our personalities. Your personalities make you unique! Some people may have different or opposite personalities with others, but that’s ok. After all, there are NO living copy of you. I repeat, there are NO such thing as people with the same personalities. And well, that makes you, you!! You’ve got to appreciate yourself! You are special! If you die, there still won’t be another you! (Unless if you are reborn, which could never happen to anyone or any living thing.)

MY PERSONALITIES!

http://www.wordle.net/show/wrdl/7867183/%5E%5E

Click here to see a Wordle of my AWESOME personalities!!!

Link to Peer Pressure Videos:

http://www.youtube.com?watch?v=-IdCFrUdmAg

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dhUMRzXQUNS

Peer Pressure, a BIG no-no!

Peer Pressure, NEVER believe in what They say!

What Happens to Your Body when it is Under Pressure?

Cannot focus on schoolwork

Headache

Tummy upset

Withdrawal

Cannot Sleep

Anxiety

Frustrated, Negative

Shaky

Heart rate goes up

Hot

Eating disorder

No appetite

Strategies to Deal with Conflict:

Get support (adult)

Try to ignore the situation

Confrontation

Apologize even if you are NOT in the wrong

Friends~

WE DO NOT HAVE :

TO BE FRIENDS

TO BE FRIENDLY

We can be friends with EVERYBODY

-Smile

-Nice greeting

-Start a conversation

-Help someone

Making Choices

The best decision is an informed decision. The choices we make effect our lives and all choices have consequences.

The choices we make have consequences, positive and negative.

The choices we make MAY affect others

There are different influences on our choice

Every individual is responsible for the choices he/she makes.

What influence our choices? Peer pressure and media.

Advertisement: Positive Influence:

- Kids won’t get bored- Kids can spend their time

watching movies.- Parents don’t have to waste much money to go

to the movies.

Negative Influence:

- Kids can get too addicted to TV.

- Kids eat too much popcorn and gets obese.

The Company wants more money by making things

cheap.

My Personality Poem~

The world is made up

of so many different people~

And I am happy to be who

I am and not anyone else~

What I look like is only

One part of me and I’m

Sure, my friends would agree~

What I say, how I feel

How I act everyday is

Much more important to me~

My personality makes me, me!

Its my personality~

My individuality

My originality

Its my specialty!

Its my personality~

Isn’t it good we are all not exactly the same?

ME!

Summary of Changes in Me

When we were learning about the topic ‘Changes in Me’, everything surprised me like when I got the information of how long the liver was, or how fast our heart can beat, and things like that. Almost everything was interesting, but learning about peer pressure, your personalities, and the brain is the most interesting. I also think learning about intestines was good, but it sort of disgusts me out for a little. I already knew some parts about the brain such as the Cerebellum, Cerebrum, and the Brain Stem and a little about how they work together like sorting out information, deciding what to do, then it (brain) sends the message to the nerves which communicates to our organs and muscles, telling them what to do. In my opinion about this unit is that it’s very interesting, and I think PYP 4 needs to pay attention here, because it is very useful in some places like if you are training to be a doctor, that would be pretty interesting.

Than

k Yo

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List

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