How Long is YOUR Digestive System?

1. First, I cut some black yarn that stretched from the front to the back of my mouth to represent my mouth. Then, I measured and cut burgundy yarn that stretched from the back of my jaw to just below my rib cage to represent my esophagus. To represent my stomach, I measured a piece of green yarn that extended from my thumb to my little finger when my fingers were stretched. I measured my height, multiplied it by four, and cut a piece of white yarn of that length to be my small intestine. Finally, I cut a piece of purple yarn that was my height to be my large intestine. Once all the pieces were tied together, the length of yarn was 853 cm (8.53 m) which is approximately the length of my actual digestive system. My main take away from this lab was how extensive, intricate and lengthy our digestive system really is. I also learned how the flow of food through our body is a system of tubes and food is passed from one tube to the next until it exits the body.

2. My height --> 5 ft 2 in = 62 in x 0.0254 m/in = 1.5748 m
    Length of my digestive system = 8.53 m
Although the digestive system is almost six times the length of my body, it's able to fit inside my abdomen because of how intricately it's folded. The large and small intestines of the digestive system, especially, are folded very precisely to save space and allow them to more compactly fit into the abdomen.

3. I think it takes about half a day (12 hours) for food to move all the way through the digestive system. According to the Mayo Clinic's website, it takes about six to eight hours for food to pass through the digestive system and small intestine, after which it goes to the large intestine (colon). and awaits further absorption of water. To go through your entire body, however, it takes an average of 53 hours Factors that affect the time it takes for food to be digested include how thoroughly the food is chewed, how much liquid is consumed with the meal (liquids dilute the digestive enzymes in the stomach and increase the digestion time), condiments and flavors that are consumed, and the frequency of meals as if food is consumed before the previous meal has been digested, the mixture of the two meals will take longer to digest.

4. Digestion includes the breaking down of food in the alimentary canal through enzymatic and mechanical methods to make energy that the body can use. This is what occurs in the first half of the digestive system. Absorption, on the other hand, is the process by which small molecules are absorbed by the small intestine and deposited into the bloodstream which transports it to various locations throughout the body. This generally occurs in the second half of the digestive system as the body begins to absorb nutrients from the digested food.

5. How does the formation of an ulcer affect how the digestive system processes food? Does the digestive system function differently depending on what foods you consume? What causes a person to throw up due to food poisoning? Is it different if they have the stomach flu?