Sheep Heart Dissection

Day 1 Procedure ~Points Possible: 50   ~Done as a group, but individual grade~

You will be using a sheep heart for your dissection.  Remember that this sheep gave part of its life to you so that you could learn from it.  Also remember that everyone is not completely comfortable dissecting.  Please be respectful of the specimen and the people around you as you complete your dissection.

Rinse your heart with water in your sink before you begin the dissection.  This will help you to rinse some of the preservatives out and will hopefully make it not smell as much.

In many cases, the pericardium may still be attached to the heart.
Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1hb0gV67CLQ

Q1: What is the purpose of the pericardium? Its the primary wall in the heart that protects the heart from damage. It is a double sack of serous membranes that secretes a fluid to lubricate the heart and reduce friction.

Q2: Observe the blood vessels connecting to the heart.  How do arteries differ from veins in their structure? Arteries have thicker walls than veins. Arteries bring blood away from the heart, and the veins bring blood to the heart.

Q3: Place your finger inside the auricle.  What function do you think the auricle serves? The auricle is rough inside. Its function is to increase the blood capacity and volume in the atrium.

Q4: Observe the external structures of the atria and ventricles.  What differences do you observe? The atrias receive blood while the ventricles discharge the blood. Some differences i observe are the ventricles are a little bigger with thicker walls. The atrias are smaller with less thicker walls.

Q6: Draw a picture of the tricuspid valve, including chordate tendinae and the papillary muscle. ( Tricuspid valve is between the right atrium-RA, and the right ventricle-RV.

Q7: Why is the “anchoring” of the heart valves by the chordate tendinae and the papillary muscle important to heart function? It is important because it helps prevent inversion and prolapse of the valves on systole. It’s to make sure the valve edges don’t get pushed into the atria.

Q8: Using pictures and/or words describe what you see.

I saw a bunch of muscle attached to other muscle.

Q9: What is the function of the semi-lunar valves? Its function is to prevent arterial blood from re-entering the heart.

Q10: Valvular heart disease is when one of more heart valves does not work properly.  Improperly functioning heart valves can lead to regurgitation, which is the backflow of blood through a leaky valve.  Ultimately this can lead to congestive heart failure, a condition that can be life threatening.

If the valve disease occurs on the right side of the heart, it results in swelling in the feet and ankles.  Why might this happen? Because the ventricles aren’t strong enough to pump blood back against gravity from your toes and your feet.

If the valve disease occurs on the left side of the heart, what complications would you expect to see? Because there is not enough blood being pumped throughout the rest of the body.

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Q11: Using pictures and/or words describe what you see. I saw a stringy like object attachted to the ventricle. It was surrounded by fat though because our sheep was fat and had fat in the heart. I then see two valve like structures next to eachother.

Q12: Describe how the left and right sides of the heart differ from each other. The right side of the heart pumps deoxygenated blood and the left side of the heart pumps oxygenated blood.

Q13: Draw and label all structures visible in the interior of the cross-section.

Unit 3 Reflection

Content Reflection

•  This unit was about how the body functions. We learned how the heart operates, and functions, along with how the heart looks. we then learned about the blood in your body and blood vessels. We were taught what is in your blood and what it helps do, and then we were taught how there are millions of blood vessels in your body and all of them lead to a certain organ to help circulate blood. We also learned about cardiovascular disease like heart attack, stroke, etc. And we then finished up the unit by learning about the respiratory system and how the body produces oxygen and decomposes carbon dioxide.   The Cardiovascular system works by delivering oxygen and nutrients to the cells in the body. The system consists of the heart and the blood vessels in the body. The veins deliver blood to the heart, and the arteries deliver the blood away. 
• Cardiovascular health is having a healthy heart, mind, or body in general. What causes heart disease is unhealthy diets, build up of plaque in the blood stream, lack of exercise and overweight and smoking. What causes stroke is a blood supply to the brain is interrupted. To promote my cardiovascular health, I can eat healthy, exercise daily, not smoke, and know my family history so I know either I'm at risk or not for a heart attack, stroke, or some other type of cardiovascular disease.  I would want to see how the heart actually processes the blood. Like it would be cool to see the blood circulate in the heart.

Reflect on your learning process and self growth 

•  My strengths were being able to understand the heart and its function, but my weakness was not being able to memorize all the different types of strokes, and the different types of white blood cells. Some successes were being able to understand the heart, but setbacks were not having enough time to study due to extracurricular activities, and other course work.I have gotten better at my Unit 2 Health Goals due to more exercise and eating healthier. My goals for the remainder of the semester are to do and complete all my homework on time and then to study my material right after i go over it in class. 

Monday Wellness Reflection

I chose the topic of weight lifting for multiple reasons. The first being I am an athlete and I wanted to know more about my body and how I can get it stronger. I also wanted to know how to weight lift correctly. Sports have always been a huge part of my life, especially baseball, and I had always been the small kid in school, so to fix that I got into weightlifting sophomore year and decided I wanted to get bigger and stronger. I chose this topic also because this is a scarce subject with classmates. At saratoga, it’s primarily focused on academics and a lot of kids don’t play sports sadly. I chose this topic so that I could help encourage people why it's good to exercise, especially weight lifting

Another reason why I chose to do this topic was because Chris plays football and is big into weight lifting too. Before we found our topic for our project, we were talking about ideas, and he told me that he loved to play football and work out. I asked why he loved to work out and he told me that it helped get his mind off of things and that he wanted to be strong so he could challenge other people in football  Because of this, we both wanted to find out what exactly happens when we lift and why it happens.

The most interesting thing I learned while doing this project was that too get bigger, take more rest days. I found this very interesting because everyone thinks that to get bigger, one needs to lift more without rest days. However this is wrong because the muscle needs time to grow and if you keep lifting everyday, then it allows only a little time for it to grow because of the more tears you cause. When muscle grow, the fibers are increasing in size

This can be attributed to an increase in contractile proteins, myofibrils per muscle fiber, connective tissue, and or increased enzymes and stored nutrients. There are two types of muscle growth which are chronic hypertrophy, which is long term, and transient hypertrophy, which is short term.

My topic is important for Health and Wellness because exercise has many positive effects on the body. Without exercise, people would be overweight all the time and possibly obese. Weightlifting helps the body improve strength, endurance, and overall fitness. Weightlifting also lowers blood pressure and cholesterol and it prevents many cancers like lung cancer, brain cancer, and even colon cancer. Finally weightlifting develops stronger bones and it helps to manage chronic conditions like diabetes obesity, heart disease and osteoporosis which is when your bones become fragile.

On a scale of one to ten I would give myself a nine because Chris and I worked for about eight hours on this project and we put a lot of time and effort into this. We spent numerous hours on research for how weight lifting helps the body, along with finding right pictures and videos to show the class what to do and what not to do.