My name is Urkle Olus Oxygen. I''m
going to tell you about a hair raising adventure I had about 157 years
ago. Me and my best friend CO2, were in the Structural Bases of Life Research
Centre working on a Cray supercomputer, trying to figure out why those huge
monstrous humans need us to live. The
computer had been working for weeks and it still didn''t have the answer. Then CO2 had one of the scariest ideas I have ever heard in my entire life. He suggested to boldly do what no Oxygen or
CO2 molecule had done before,
to make a record and map the path and make a report on why the human race needs
us to live. I suggested that his idea
could be tested on someone else, but he insisted that his brain wave was one
that only we could execute because of
our experience. I know that I personally
have travelled through 1,204,621,057 humans but it was always accidental. I would be travelling on my way when all of a
sudden the Nitrogen, Oxygen, Argon, Water Vapour, Carbon Dioxide, Neon, Helium,
Krypton, Hydrogen, Xenon, and Ozone gasses (all are commonly known as AIR)
started to move towards this black hole.
Of course we all started screaming and then we closed our eyes till we
came out of the black hole again. But
this time CO2 and I would keep our
eyes open and write down the horrendous experience we had. But this experience I was about to have, took
some school work. I had to learn how to
write, spell, and to go into depth on the anatomy of the human body. After 16 years in school I graduated with
first class honers and my title was a "hyper supergenitic counter
clockwise Oxygen atom."
Since I am telling you about what happened to me, I think I should go
into depth about myself. If you are not
a moron, you would know that my atomic number is 8 and my weight is 15.9994 and
I make up about 20% of , I forgot the name.........OH!! Earth''s
atmosphere. My boiling point or the
temperature in which I turn into gas is
-182.962. Pretty chilly hey. If you are a person who likes science you
could tell me that liquid oxygen is magnetic and can be held between the poles
of a strong magnet. Cool!! Anyway, I got a little side tracked.
A few days before I was to go on the mission, I took out life insurance,
just in case what I was about to see gave me a vasospasm, or what we call it, a
heart-attack. I also went to a
psychiatrist because I was so nervous that when I tried to stand up my knees
would knock together. The trauma I was
experiencing was incredible, so incredible that it even amazed the leading
doctors at that time. There was no cure,
the doctors said that I was "self destructing" my "sub atomic
nucleic structure" and if I didn''t get myself under control, I would
collapse because of exhaustion. I took
dozens of sleeping pills to get to sleep.
In the morning, I had to drink at least three cans of Jolt (twice the
caffeine) to keep me awake. Around lunch
time, I would get out the Molson Canadian Ice (fungus pea) just to keep myself
settled down. You could say I was
"a living hell."
Then the day came. It came with
such swiftness that it just about knocked me over, but it came. It was the day that I was to do what no sane
oxygen atom had done before, to keep my eyes open and record what happens to me
when I first go into that "black hole", sorry the nose. You see I got a got a lot smarter since I
went to school. Just befor I go on my trip, I want to talk about the things
that I will write down. I will be
writing down notes as I see things happen.
I will be writing in the present tense, not the past. I will be doing that because that is what
will be happening. As you may know, this
is the first time in my life that I will be doing this so I might get scared
but please stay with me. When I see
things I will expand on what I see because that is why I went to school. So here we go!!
As I enter the nose I see that the air enters in two streams, because
the nostrils (the two openings in the nose) are divided by the septum ,which is
a thin wall of
cartilage (tough tissue) and bones. I see the nostrils contain hairs which aid in
filtering dirt out of the air. This guy had a lot of dirt on the sides of
his nostrils so I knew he didn''t pick his nose.
From the nostrils I enter the
nasal passage, which lies above the
mouth. It was getting a little bit dark
so I decided to turn my flashlight on. I
saw above the nasal passage three
shelflike bones called turbinates which were covered with mucus membranes which
moisten the air. While looking at those structures, I observed that these bones
help warm the inhaled air also. Looking
closely at the mucus membrane, I see they are covered with microscopic,
hairlike projections called cilia. They
were waving back and forth constantly, moving dust, bacteria, and fluids from
the nose to the throat for swallowing.
Shifting my gaze to the highest part of the nasal cavity, I could see
the olfactory nerve receptors lying in a small piece of mucus membrane about as
big as a dime. These receptors give the
human his sense of smell by generating nerve impulses in response to chemicals
in the air. One thing that really struck
me is that the main thing the nasal passage does is to warm the air and add
moisture to it before it goes any farther.<All these advantages of nasal
breathing are lost in mouth breathing.>
From the nasal cavity, I go into the pharynx, which is a cone-shaped
tube that connects the nose and mouth with the voice box and oesophagus. It looks about 5 inches long and has muscular
walls lined with mucus membrane. As I''m
going down, I see a flap of cartilage called the epiglottis which is open. I guess I will be going through it. Now I begin to see the Larynx, or the
"Adam''s apple," sometimes called the voice box because it contains
the vocal cords. While I keep observing,
I notice that the larynx is shaped like a box, and it has a supporting structure made up of nine sections
of cartilage. The thyroidcartilage, in
front, and the cricoid cartilage, in the back, which look to me as the most
important structures. The thyroid
cartilage consists of two wing-shaped plates that meet to form the projection
called the "Adam''s apple."
These plates make up the side walls of the larynx. The ring-shaped cricoid cartilage forms the back
wall of the larynx. Now I begin to see
the vocal cords, two bands of elastic tissue that lie along the sides of the
glottis wall. These muscles can stretch
the cords, change their shape or bring them close together. When the cords are close together, air rushing
between them produce sound. The shape
and stretch in the cords determines the pitch (highness or lowness) of the
voice. The shape of the throat, nose,
and mouth determines the quality of a person''s voice.
Now I begin to enter the t-t-trachea.
It looks to me like a tube reinforced with cartilaginous rings to
prevent collapse. I look closely and
notice that the trachea is lined with cilia.
Cilia look like hair. They are
always in constant motion moving back
and forth, and carry dust or dirt taken in with the air upward toward the
mouth. The dust is mixed with mucus and
the mucus even traps more particles in the air.
I can hear the swishing of the cilia as they move back and forth. As I am going down they were getting pretty
thick and I was weaving in and out of t