Transcript Muscles and Space

Muscles and Space
• Two functions of your skeleton are to:
(1) provide shape and support for your body
(2) enable you to move.
• Skeletal muscles are attached to the bones
of your skeleton.
• Muscles work in coordination with your
skeletal system and nervous system to
make your body move.
• Regular exercise is important for
maintaining both muscular strength and
flexibility.
• Exercise causes individual muscle cells to
grow in size.
• Because your muscles are trained to
work in the presence of gravity, without
exercise or gravity muscles shrink.
• This is called muscle atrophy.
• Space programs have developed special
equipment for astronauts to exercise in
space to prevent muscle atrophy.
• Dr. James Hicks is a UCI professor who
helped develop some of the exercise
equipment used by astronauts.
• Dr. Hicks is a comparative physiologisthe studies how and why animals work.
• Because of his knowledge of
gravitational physiology, Dr. Hicks was
asked to educate the crew of
Disney/Pixar’s WALL-E about the longterm effects of space flight on human
physiology.
• His scientific conclusion was that after a
long period in space, humans would
“look like blobs.”