Science Notebook

Digestive System Lab

Making Poop

9.13.16

Have you ever questioned why do we poop?

If you have, this is the place for you!

Something you probably didn't know is that we produce 1 to 1.5 liters of saliva a day! It is actually a lot when you put it all in a measuring cup! Not only that but our digestive system is 9 meters long and takes us 6-8 hours to digest food!!

We eat everyday to get energy and proteins. As it goes through our digestive system there is many things that are happening and a very long process. Let me tell you about it!

First things first, every digestive system starts with the mouth. Inside the mouth there is a tongue, teeth, salivary glands, and many enzymes. Inside the mouth the are narrow teeth that are located in the front of the mouth and are made for cutting called incisors.

After the incisors do all the work they can the molars start putting themselves to work to help grind the food even more.

Once the food has gone through the mouth its nest stop is the esophagus. The esophagus connects the throat to the stomach.

The following step is the stomach! Once the food is in the stomach there are certain enzymes that are need for it to do its job. One of the is lipase, which is used help breakdown the fats in the foods. The other enzyme that is in it is pepsin. Pepsin is used to breakdown proteins but it only happens when hydrochloric acid is present. 

The stomach does a lot of more work than people think! After all the enzymes are in it, the stomach is a muscle and is very flexible. It works even more to mix and breakdown all the proteins and fats that are needed.

Subsequently after the stomach is done, the food moves down to the small intestine. In the small intestine is a tubular structure that is absorbing the nutrition of the food. 

After the food transfers from the small intestine to the large lipase and pepsin are again present, but bile and amylase are introduced. Amylase is breaking down carbohydrates, and bile is that breaks down fats in to acid. At this stage the large intestine is absorbing the water from the fecal matter. Its main purpose is absorption so that means if you were to absorb to much of the water you would get diarrhea... ew that's gross!! Also if you weren't to absorb enough of it you would be constipated.

Finally after the "food" passes through the last section of the large intestine which is the rectum and will end at the anus! The rectum is where the feces is stored temporarily. The rectum is again absorbing all the rest of the left overs then poops out all the rest through its anal!

And that kids is how we poop! I hope it you enjoyed learning about it and try this at home!