Unit 6 Reflection

In this unit we learned about skeletal system. That ranges from the building, the breakdown, the fracturing, the remodeling, and the connections between them all. We started off by learning the the different parts of the skeletal system, those being the bones themselves, the joints, the cartilage, and the ligaments (as well as tendons which connect bone to muscle). The skeleton is comprised of 2 major groupings of bones: the axial bones such as the skull, spine, and ribcage, and the appendicular bones which is made up of everything else. Those branch into smaller categories: long bones, short bones, flat bones, and irregular bones, each of which have slightly different make ups of dense and spongey bone tissue. Of course we learned the names for many groups of bones but we did not go into extreme detail of every single bone.

 

Next we got into the make up of the bones and what causes the breakdown and build up of the bone tissue. There are three main cell types to do with the bones: osteocytes, the mature ones; osteoclasts, the bone destroyers; and osteoblasts, the bone builders. When there is bone damage or a bone is broken, the bone goes through remodeling because of the vitamins and minerals in the body such as calcium, and Vitamins C, K, and D. We also learned about the many different types of fractures and the process they go through to heal starting with a lot of blood clotting and inflammation and going from a rough structure of fibro-cartilage and spongy bone, to a bony callus and finally back to normal dense bone tissue.

I would really have loved to go into the tedious process of learning the exact name for each bone in the body and what it looks like because that is the kind of stuff that I love to have in my head and is more the area that I want to focus on when I go to university. I am still slightly confused on joints and how each of the different types differ from one another and how to distinguish between the similar ones. 

My favorite part of this unit was dissecting the owl pellet  because I loved being able to recognize each bone we pulled out of the hairs and being able to generally identify what it was and recreate the animal from my own knowledge. In doing this unit I found the specific part of this subject that I an really passionate about and would be fully happy studying further because it is something I would look up in my free time, like the 20 Time project which is also something I am passionate about. Thinking about my goals, I have recognized them and taken some steps to achieve them, but I really haven't been able to because other things that have immediate priority have gotten in the way which is another thing I should improve on.