BONE UP ON BONES What Is The Purpose Of Bones? Bones have two purposes: to give shape and structure to your body and to protect your internal organs.
At birth, people have more than 300 bones, but by the time you are an adult, you will just have 206.
Where do those additional bones go? Some bones fuse together, making one bone where there had been two.
Where Are Your Bones Found? 27 are in each hand.
26 are in each foot.
14 are in your face.
7 are in your neck, same number as in a giraffe's.
Your funny bone is not a bone at all.
It is a mass of nerves that runs along the long bone in your arm - a bone called humerus.
The longest bone in your body is the thigh bone, or femur.
It is of your total height.
It keeps growing as long as you do.
Your spinal cord, however, stops growing when you are about 5 years old.
MUSCLE MANIA Muscles allow you to move by pulling and pushing your skeleton along.
Some muscles, like your heart, are involuntary.
That means they work without you doing anything about it.
Other muscle movements are voluntary, like when you move your hand to pick up and clench a ball.
You have 30 muscles in your face.
Your largest muscle is called gluteus maximus (another name for 'buttocks').
Your eye muscles move more than 100, 000 times a day.
THE SKIN YOU ARE IN Your skin is the largest organ of your body, and it does more than just hold you together.
It forms a barrier to keep germs and water out.
More than half of the dust you see in your house is made of shed skin.
Over a lifetime, most people shed about 40 pounds (18 kg) of skin.
An average size adult has about 20 square feet (1.
9 square meter) of skin.
Skin gets its color from a pigment called melanin.
FUNNY FACTS Halitosis is the fancy name for bad breath.
Most people pass gas about 15 times a day.
Earwax can range in color from gray to yellow to orange.
The acid in your stomach (hydrochloric acid) can eat trough steel.
While still in their mother's womb, babies can hiccup.
Sneezing sends air (and snot) out of your nose at about 100 miles (161 kilometers) per hour.
There are billions of bacteria in your body and covering your skin.