The Respiratory System

Recall cards on the animal respiratory system: systems of gas exchange (why diffusion alone fails as body size grows, and the diversity of respiratory surfaces from skin and gills to insect tracheae and the mammalian airway from nasal cavity to alveoli); gas exchange across respiratory surfaces (partial pressure, the composition of air, and the oxygen and carbon dioxide partial-pressure gradients that drive diffusion in the lungs and tissues); breathing (Boyle's law and the mechanics of inhalation and exhalation, the pleurae, surfactant, lung compliance and resistance, restrictive and obstructive diseases, dead space, and gas exchange in amphibians and birds); and the transport of gases in bodily fluids (hemoglobin and cooperative oxygen binding, the oxygen-hemoglobin dissociation curve and what shifts it, the bicarbonate buffer system and chloride shift that carry carbon dioxide, and carbon monoxide poisoning).