Shapes and Sizes of Muscles

Shapes and Sizes of Muscles

Shapes and Sizes of Muscles
Reading Level

	edHelper's suggested reading level:	grades 5 to 7
	Flesch-Kincaid grade level:	5.81

Vocabulary

challenging words:

anus, bipennate, deltoid, extensor, fascicles, flexor, fusiform, groupings, hyoid, multipennate, pennate, sartorius, stapedius, subjective, swallowing, unipennate

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Shapes and Sizes of Muscles
By Jennifer Kenny

¹     Do you remember playing when you were a young child? Did you like to group things like rocks by their shapes or colors? Did you put your toys away based on what they were - dolls, cars, or blocks? Did you group your baseball cards by teams? If you did, in a very simple way you were classifying things. This is very subjective, meaning, it is based on a system by the way you like to group them. Scientists and physicians do the same thing with muscles.

²     You already know that there are three types of muscle tissue in your body. Your heart is made of cardiac muscle. In the digestive tract and the blood vessels, you can find smooth muscle. The muscles that are attached to bones for movement are the skeletal muscles.

³     You also know that the action produced from muscles can be voluntary or involuntary. The action you can control is voluntary. The action you can't control is involuntary. Your smooth muscle and cardiac muscle produce actions that are involuntary such as the beating of your heart. Your skeletal muscles, though, can do both. You can jump when you want to. You can change the channel on the remote if you wish. You can blink your eyes whenever you want, but your eyes will also blink if you aren't thinking about it. Therefore, some scientists like to group the muscles based on this information.

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