Digestive System Lab

1. In this lab I measured the lengths of different structures in my body: mouth, esophagus, stomach, small intestine, and large intestine. Then I tied them all together to form the length of the digestive system in my body. Astonishingly it formed 9.1575 meters.

2. The length of my digestive system is over 5 times my height. I think my digestive system is able to fit inside my abdomen because it is folded and packed tightly together.

3. On average, I think it takes a few hours for food to more through the entire digestive system. When I researched it, I found that it takes approximately 24 hours for food to go through. I think that because the food has to go pass over 9 meters, it takes this long for food to fully digest.

4. Digestion is different from absorption because digestion involves the mouth and the stomach working to break down the food in preparation for absorption. Absorption involves the small and large intestines with mostly chemical digestion. It's role is to provide nutrients for the body.

5. What triggers certain reactions in the digestive system?

DIGESTIVE ORGAN	COLOR and LENGTH (CM)
mouth	white/10.2
esophagus	red/43
stomach	green/18
small intestine	yarn/675.64
large intestine	gold/168.91
TOTAL	915.75