Using A.D.A.M.

You are about to begin your journey of understanding kidney function. It is not a simple task. I want you to use the A.D.A.M. Interactive Physiology Urinary System CD by Marieb. It is excellent. The anatomy review is not entirely necessary for lecture, but parts of it will help... and it will certainly help for lab.

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The glomerular filtration, early filtrate processing, and late filtrate processing chapters tell you everything you need to know about urine formation and more! In fact, they give you more than your book covers, and even a little more than I cover. I will not be holding you responsible for more detail than I cover in the web pages. For example, you will not need to know the names of all the protein channels within the membrane of the tubular cells. I only want you to be responsible for the sodium-potassium pump (which the CD calls the Na/K ATPase).

The only thing I am unhappy with in the urinary system CD is the way it describes osmosis. It never uses the terms hypertonic and hypotonic. Instead, it talks about "osmolarity." When the CD says that one solution has a higher osmolarity than another, it means that the first solution is hypertonic to the second. So, "high osmolarity" = hypertonic, and "low osmolarity" = hypotonic. The CD chapters also talk about osmosis like one would talk about diffusion (osmosis is a special instance of diffusion, but is easier to keep straight with separate terminology). Now that you know to expect that, it shouldn't be too tricky to go through the CD.

I would also recommend taking notes as you go through the CD. Each page of each chapter is numbered (like, "page 5 of 14") at the top. You can jot down the page number and the topic, and then take notes as you go. I recommend this because there are so many intertwined concepts in nephron physiology, that you might find that notes help you work through them.