How muscles produce tension and force

You have learned about muscle fiber anatomy and about how muscle fibers contract. This week, the main point is: what kind of force will a muscle produce when it contracts and how will that allow for movement? There are three web pages (twitches, summation, and types of contractions) that deal with these ideas.

We will also be finding out a little bit more about the different types of skeletal muscle (fast and slow) since these types are linked to how muscle force is produced. There is one web page on this.

Finally, we will be comparing skeletal muscle to the other types of muscle (cardiac and smooth) to apply the principals you have already learned to understand how our involuntary muscle tissues work. There is one web page on this, too.

openallnite.gif (5335 bytes) I hope that this unit goes smoothly for you. Let me know if there is anything you don't understand. Remember, you can always e-mail me pigeonmail.gif (6180 bytes) or post a bulletin board question.