The lungs are lined by a thin film of water. This water has a high surface tensi
ID: 3521858 • Letter: T
Question
The lungs are lined by a thin film of water. This water has a high surface tension that creates a collapsing force with the lung. The collapsing force inside the alveoli is important for elastic recoil of the lung during exhalation. However, too much collapse would mean that the lungs cannot expand during inhalation.
1) What would happen if the attractice forces between the water molecules were disrupted to some degree?
2) If the collapsing forces were increased above normal within the lung, what would intrapleural pressure need to be to prevent too much lung collapse?
3) The small the alveoli, the more likely the alveoli will collapse due to surface tension. What do you think happens to the elastic recoil of the lung when the walls between adjacent alveoli breakdown and adjacent alveoli become combined into one big alveolus?
4) Surfactant is produced by the lung cells to disrupt the alveolar surface tension. However, surfactant is not produced until the last 10 weeks of gestation and premature babies sometimes suffer from the lack of surfactant production. What effects do you think you would observe in these premature infants?
Explanation / Answer
1)If the attractive forces are disrupted by some degree, The surface tension of the water film will decrease, which will in turn reduces the elastic recoil in the lungs. This causes retainment of air in the lung . This will also cause improper inhalation also.
2)If the collapsing force is too high , the lungs tends to collapse, so the intapleural pressure will become negative, which try to compensate the collapsing by expanding the lung.
3)If the surface tension of the alveoli increase , which may be the given case, The surface tension reduceswhich will cause the recoiling capicity.
4)Lack of surfactants will cause severe problems in the babies, such babies will have-
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