Blood vessels (and fetal blood flow)

Note: This unit is the last of three on the cardiovascular system. The next time we meet, you will have your test on the cardiovascular system (Monday, 3/20), which is covered in units 18 - 20.

Here is the general layout for this week's web pages:

General anatomy and usefulness of blood vessels... here (as in lab) you will see that all blood vessels have a common structure, but that arteries and veins do display some differences.

	Important features in arteries and veins
	Capillaries are special blood vessels: on this page, the special structure of capillaries is discussed, so that you can understand how they allow for exchange of materials between the blood and other body tissues.

Exchange across capillaries... how and why materials cross the capillary walls is described in this page.

	Exchange across systemic circuit capillaries... special attention is given to Figure 15.31 here.
	Exchange across pulmonary circuit capillaries

Blood Pressure... what is it? You have learned about the pressure of the blood in the heart, but now it is time to learn about the pressure of blood in blood vessels.

	Arterial Blood Pressure
	Venous Blood Pressure

	What factors influence it?
	How do we control it?

How is fetal circulation different from adult circulation in people? For this page, I do not go into details of adult circulation paths, since we will have done that in lab. Instead, I only highlight the differences between fetal and adult circulation patterns.

Here's another way to view the webpages for this week:

layoutU20.jpg (14727 bytes)

I took this image from the program I use to write my webpages. It shows you a general scheme for how all the web pages are linked up for this unit. Just keep in mind that not all of the titles for each page shows fully-- for example, Unit 20 Assignment only shows as "Unit 20..." because there isn't enough room.

I picked the theme this week (called "tilt") because it has these blue and pink things that point in different directions. I thought it was sort of like how arteries (red) and veins (blue) send things in different directions.