Heart Dissection - Science

Hello everyone!

In science, we recently did an interesting activity, we had dissected a heart, a pig's heart in particular. Before that, we had been learning about the circulatory system and the parts of the heart. I didn't actually partake in the activity I just took the photos for my group, it looked fun on the side-lines. Also, we were lucky enough to have an Atrium on our heart, because of our teacher Ms, Abernethy. She mentioned that the heart wouldn't have an atrium as the butcher's cut off the top of the heart. 

What have we been learning about?

This heart dissection really sums up most of what we have been learning, because blood relates to the heart. The circulatory system relates to the blood which relates to the heart, the respiration system. Relates to the blood which relates to the circulatory system and leads to the heart. Everything connects together because they all lead to the heart, that why this heart dissection is important. 

The first thing we learned about that mainly relates to the blood was the circulatory system, if you don't what the circulatory system is. It is an organ system that spreads or permits the blood to circulate in the body. This is to make sure the blood is surely able to transport the nutrients 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. This is because the blue veins are 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. so it has less muscle this is just so it can 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 lungs needs more muscle because they need to push the blood throughout the whole body. 

Why are we dissecting a heart?

To effectively learn and identify the different parts of the heart in real life, as it is different from just a diagram. If we saw it in the flesh we would be able to properly see and identify the different parts of the heart. Being able to analyze everything in the heart. 

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

Most of the class did not have an atrium and veins because usually the top of the heart would be cut off along with the atrium and veins. So we were lucky to have an atrium, but not the vein, we were also able to identify. The left and right sides of the heart, by feeling for the side which has more muscle. We also saw the valve, which is a thick layer of tissue that separates the left and right sides of the heart. We noticed that the valve was pretty thick we were told that it was so oxygenated and deoxygenated blood wouldn't mix together. We were also able to see the ventricles which looked pretty stringy. 

Did you enjoy the dissection? why/why not?

I actually did not take part in the dissecting activity, as I was the one filming for my group, but I was still able to enjoy it. Since I was watching close-up through my phone as I zoomed up, I thought it was really cool. This was because I was able to still see how the dissection was done, I just didn't touch it. 

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