Wowee...

My last day before I fly. I decided to go to "Bodies: The Exhibition." I was so looking forward to it, and I was not disappointed. However, it wasn't until I got there did I realize I had confused this with Body Worlds, which is the one I have been wanting to see forever. But this one was cool too. It features real human bodies from China that are preserved, and lets you explore the composition and workings of the human body. I learned a whole lot, which I will list below for my own reference. Part of it I copied on tissue paper, and a worker there gave me two pieces of blank paper to take notes. Wasn't that thoughtful of her?

-Deltoid
-the tongue has 16 muscles
-cramps are involuntary contractions of skeletal muscles that don't relax
-th body's smallest muscles are found in the ears
-there are three muscle tissues:
skeletal muscle: moves the bones
cardiac muscle: moves the heart
smooth muscle: moves blood, food, and fluids through your body
-the brain is 80% water
-girls' brains: 2.5% of body weight
boys': 2%
-depression is thought to be caused by a combination of brain chemistry, thinking
patterns, and traumatic experiences
-Eating breakfast can improve memory
-the size of eyes does not change between infancy and adulthood, so children's eyes
are large in comparison to their brains and skulls, giving them that wide-eyed look
-dura mater 硬膜
-the thumping sound of heartbeats is the sound of heart valves shutting
-pulse is the artery wall stretching with each heartbeat
-jejunum 空腸
-ileum 迴腸
-cecum 盲腸
-colon 結腸
-spleen 脾臟
-every drop of blood in the body passes through the heart once per minute
-there are 60,000 miles of blood vessels in the human body
-the brain requires 20% of the body's total blood supply
-veins have valves to prevent blood from flowing backward
-"The heart is the king and the lungs are its ministers." Hwang Ti
-when a breast-feeding woman eats garlic, her baby will suckle longer
-people are born with innate preferences for sweet or salty
-tongue: 4 taste regions--sweet, sour, salty, bitter
a 5th region?--umami, a taste similar to MSG (味精)
-omentum 網膜
-your body is shortest at the end of the day and longest just after rising in the
morning
=> body weight and gravity act on the vertebral column, then the intervertebral discs
become compressed and flattened; during sleep, the discs spring back to their
original shape
-stomach growl is peristalsis in action (蠕動)
-Meckel's diverticulum 梅克耳氏憩室/ 迴腸憩室
-duodenum 十二指腸
-To digest:
Ingest
Chew: 10-30 times
Swallow: 4-8 seconds
Churn: 2-4 hours
Absorb: 3-5 hours
Compact: 10 hours to several days
Eliminate
-it takes about 24 hours to digest, from mouth to anus
-A woman is born with all the eggs she will ever have
-A man continues to produce sperm throughout his life
-the male sperm is the smallest cell in the body, and the female egg is the largest
-transverse 橫向
-sagittal 矢狀切面
-uterine 子宮的
-fibroid 纖維瘤;子宮肌瘤
-placenta 胎盤
-By the 11th week, all major organs of a fetus have formed
-femur 股骨
-lymph 淋巴
-polymer preservation
-ectopic 異位,異常

This reminds me, there were babies and siamese twins in the exhibit too, from really tiny ones to ones several months old, and a few were abnormal.

It's really hard to believe that all the specimen are real because they don't look real to me, rather like they were molded from plastic or something, but they totally are. Except for the eyes. I learned that eyes are hard to preserve as they get gray or something (the lady who gave me the paper told me) and get disgusting.

All in all, although it was a bit pricey even with a discount, it was totally worth it.