Digestive system ; Sixth grade science ; Homeschool

 Digestive system; Sixth grade science

Did you know that the digestive progress doesn’t start in the stomach? Or did you know your body uses two types of digestions? During the 5th week of home school, I’ve been learning about the digestive system, and I’ve been longing to share these wacky and informative facts. I’ve gotten this information from 180 days of science of sixth grade and everything you need to know to ace science. 

What is a digestive system?: 

The digestive system takes and breaks down food, collects nutrients that was in the food and expels the leftover out of the body. The digestive system starts from the mouth and ends at the large intestine. Our body uses two types of digestion. The first is mechanical and the second is chemical digestion. Mechanical digestion is when your body physically breaks down food (like what the stomach does for example). Chemical digestion is when your body breaks down food with chemical reaction, or acids in your body (The stomach uses chemical digestion too!) 

How it works

The digestion system starts at the mouth, were you chew the food you ate. While you chew, salvia is released from salivary glands which forms the food into a clumpy ball. When you swallow, the ball goes done a tube called an esophagus where the food gets pushed down int the stomach. Here is where the interesting part happens. When the ball reaches the strong organ, the ball gets broken down into smaller chunks. After its broken down, the chunks turns into an acid called chyme.  Then, the chyme makes its way to the small intestines, where a juice called bile breaks up fat. Bile comes from the liver and pancreas. While the bile does its job, the pancreas releases a juice that breaks down fats and proteins using chemical reactions. Nutrients gets absorbed into bloodstreams. All of this happen in the duodenum, which is where most of the digestion system takes place. Then the chyme travels to the large intestine. At this point, all the water that was in the chyme gets absorbed. The leftover that didn’t get digested turns into waste. The whole system takes about 40 hours in total to finish at the anus. (The anus is the last part of the digestive system station)

Conclusion:

As you can see, the digestive system should be one of the most fascinating systems in the human world. Who knew eating some chips can make your body work so hard?