Hurumanu 2: Science - Heart Dissection

What have we been learning about?

"This heart dissection really sums up most of what we have been learning. The circulatory system relates to the blood which relates to the heart, the respiration system. Everything connects together because they all lead to the heart, that why this heart dissection is important. The first thing we learned about, mainly relates to the blood was the circulatory system. It is a system that spreads or permits the blood to circulate within the body. This is to make sure the blood along with its nutirients and minerals is successfully able to transport  all over the body. If we don't have a circulatory system our blood wouldn't be able to transport the nutrients our body needs. This is because of gravity, our blood would just be at the bottom of our body. 

We had also learned about the parts of the heart, as you probably know on a diagram you usually see red and blue veins. The blue veins [represents] carrying deoxygenated blood and the red veins are carrying oxygenated blood.

On the right side of the heart is where the deoxygenated blood needs to go through. It has less muscle because it only needs to get through to the lungs to get oxygen. Then it will come back to the heart as oxygenated blood, to be put on the left side the being pushed throughout the whole body. This is why the right side only has a little amount of muscle because the lungs are very close to the heart. On the other hand, the left side of the heart needs more muscle to push the blood throughout the whole body. "

Why are we dissecting a heart?

We dissected the heart because of our views about the heart. So far we have only looked at diagrams, which can vary and be different from what a real heart would look like. Being able to analyse such would be beneficial in our knowledge abut the heart.

What are the parts of the heart? did you see them?

Most of the hearts that were given to us to dissect did not have the atrium, the tubes. This was because how the hearts were butchered, when butchering the heart the usual process is to take the atrium out and leave with only the ventricles. Ours was a special case in that the tube from the atriums were able to be viewed. Two tubes connected into the ventricles. We then analysed the thickeness of the parts of the heart. In doing so, we were able to distingush the right from the left ventricle. The left ventricle was sgnificantly thicker as it has to work into pumping the blood around the body. Whilst the right only pumps to the lungs. The valve was seen as well, it is used to separating the oxygenated and deoxygenated blood. To successfully do that it would need to be strong as well as thick. The veins and the arteries were able to be seen as well, with the veins bringing back the blood to the heart as well as the arteries [Aorta] transporting the blood to the body.

Did you enjoy the dissection? why/why not?

I very much enjoyed the activity of dissection as it gave me and my peers experience. I enjoy being able to "dissassemble" parts of a whole. This would make it so that we can understand not only what the subject is but what it contains. 

Here is a short clip of our hard dissection. (it is muted as there was a lot of background noises)