Week 7 — The Skeletal System: Bone Tissue & Structure

Human Anatomy and Physiology I Free sample edition

Why this matters

A future radiology technician looking for a child's growth plate and a nurse reading a blood calcium result both read this week's living bone.

In plain language

Your bones are not dry sticks; they are a living tissue that is torn down and rebuilt all your life. The skeletal system (your bones and their cartilage) holds you up, lets you move, guards your organs, makes your blood cells, and stores calcium and fat. This week you read one long bone the way an anatomist does, from its shaft to its two ends and into its hollow center. You zoom in to the tiny rings and struts inside bone and meet the four cells that build it, keep it, and break it down. And you run Week 1's feedback loop again, this time on the calcium in your blood.

Already covered: Week 1 gave you the feedback loop. Week 5 put bone and cartilage in the connective tissue family. Week 6 started the vitamin D that helps you absorb calcium.
This week: bone's six jobs, its shapes, a long bone's parts, its cells, its growth, and the calcium loop.
How they connect: Week 1's loop gets a new variable, blood calcium, with bone cells as effectors.
Where we're going next: Week 8, the midterm review, then Week 9's skeleton and joints.

Focus

How is a bone built, from the shaft you can hold to the living cells inside it, and why does it never stop rebuilding?

By the end of this module, you should be able to:

[ ] label a long bone end to end and in cross-section
[ ] tell compact from spongy bone and sort bones by shape
[ ] match each bone cell to its job
[ ] run the calcium loop with its hormone in each direction

To-do

Plan your week

Read Chapter 7 (about 45 minutes), then the lecture and slides.
Work the tutorial (60–90 minutes) and practice set (20 minutes).
Do the A&P Lab & Inquiry (two hours), the discussion, and the assignment.
Take the quiz.

This week's checkpoint: read a long bone from end to end, then name the cell that builds bone and the one that resorbs it.

You've got this

Ask your instructor early if you get stuck.

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