Lesson 1.1: Keeping an Internal Balance

People are warm-blooded mammals.  Your body must maintain a body temperature that is between a very small range for you to function and live.  If you get too cold or too hot, you will not survive.  Body temperature is only one of many things in your body that must be kept within a particular range. 

Read Keeping an Internal Balance on page 216 in your textbook to begin learning about the ability of the body to maintain an internal balance. 

Question 1. What is homeostasis?

Question 2. Figure 11.1 shows four conditions that affect the people in them.  What are those four conditions?

Question 3. At what levels in your body do the mechanisms of homeostasis operate?

 

Check your answers with those that follow.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Answers to Questions:

Question 1. What is homeostasis?

Homeostasis is the ability of the body to maintain an internal balance.

Question 2. Figure 11.1 shows four conditions that affect the people in them.  What are those four conditions?

The four conditions are

        • cold air temperature (wet skin exposed to cold air)
        • hot air temperature
        • hard exercise (running)
        • stress (writing a test under time pressure)

Question 3. At what levels in your body do the mechanisms of homeostasis operate?

The mechanisms of homeostasis operate at all levels of organization, right down to the molecular and cellular levels.

 


Click on the page forward to continue Lesson 1.

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