Your Amazing Body
The machine you live inside Made of Tiny Cells · The Heart and Blood · Breathing · The Brain in Charge · From Food to Fuel · Bones and Muscles.
Ages 11–13
What's inside
Made of Tiny Cells — the building blocks of you
Everything about you — your skin, your bones, your brain, your blood — is built from the same basic thing: cells. A cell is the smallest living piece of you, far too small to see without a microscope, yet each one is a busy little machine that eats, works and eventually makes copies of itself. You are, incredibly, a team of about 37 trillion of these tiny living units, all cooperating to be one person: you.
The Heart and Blood — your body's delivery network
Every one of your trillions of cells needs a constant delivery of oxygen and food, and a way to take its rubbish away — and they're spread all over your body. Solving that delivery problem is the job of one of your most tireless organs: the heart. It's a fist-sized muscle in the middle of your chest that never, ever stops, pumping a river of blood to every corner of you and back, day and night, for your whole life.
Breathing — how you turn air into life
You can go weeks without food and days without water, but only minutes without breathing. That's because every cell in your body runs on oxygen, burning it with your food to release energy — and the only way to get oxygen inside you is to breathe it in from the air. The pair of organs that pull off this vital trick, around 20,000 times a day without you thinking about it, are your lungs.
The Brain in Charge — your control centre
Behind your eyes sits the most complicated object in the known universe: your brain. This soft, wrinkled organ, no bigger than your two fists together, is the command centre for absolutely everything you are — it runs your body without being asked, and it's also where your thoughts, your feelings, your memories and your whole sense of being 'you' come from. And it does it all using nothing but tiny bursts of electricity.
From Food to Fuel — the journey through your gut
Your body runs on the energy and building materials locked inside your food — but a mouthful of sandwich is far too big and complex for your cells to use directly. So your body puts every meal through an amazing disassembly line called digestion: a nine-metre journey that patiently breaks food down into pieces small enough to slip into your blood and feed every last cell. It's a factory that never closes.
Bones and Muscles — your frame and your engines
Without a skeleton, you'd be a floppy, shapeless blob on the floor — and without muscles, that skeleton could never move. Together, your bones and muscles make up the system that gives you your shape, holds you upright, protects your soft insides, and lets you run, jump, write and wave. It's the part of your body you feel working hardest, and it's built to be repaired and to get stronger the more you use it.
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