Ollie the Oxygen Molecule’s
amazing adventure
It was a warm, summer day. Ollie is floating around a park when he felt a strange
sucking feeling. It forces him back into a nasal hole. He turns around and sees spikes
lining the walls. As he is forced deeper down in the nasal passage it gets warmer. Ollie
reaches out and grabs a spike to stop his journey. The spike is coated in sticky mucus.
He realizes this and is so grossed out he lets it go.
As Ollie is pulled down the pharynx it
suddenly ends and he sees the
epiglottis, a monstrous flap that seals
his fate, trapping him in the larynx.
He is so focused on the epiglottis he
almost misses the vocal cords, inside
the famed voice box, they resonate
when air passes over them.
As he continues through the trachea he
notices the passage breaks off into two and
knows he has entered the lungs. He goes left.
The passage breaks off again and he picks
the right bronchi. The passage breaks off
again and again, the tubes getting smaller.
Eventually they are really tiny. These are the
bronchioles, or small bronchi. He continues
down bronchiole and tube splits again, getting
smaller, as he transitions to another
bronchiole.
Finally, he makes it to the alveoli, tiny sacs filled with gasses
surrounded by capillaries. He is pushed up against the inside of an
alveolus and sees the dark red, oxygen deprived blood cells flying
past. He is squished in with a bunch oxygen and feels himself
moving through the alveolus and into the blood, because there is so
many oxygen molecules in high concentration in the alveolus and
not in the blood so Ollie diffuses into the capillary.
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The blood cells turn a lighter red as they get oxygen. Once Ollie is in the
plasma he is stuck on a red blood cell. Ollie stays in the capillary until the
blood cell forces him into another, bigger tube called a vein. The veins keep
getting bigger and connecting with each other until it forms the big pulmonary
vein, meaning the vein that goes from the lungs to the heart. Ollie flows into
the left atrium and is pumped out of left ventricle in the aorta, a big artery. He
travels for a long time, switching to several arteries, taking him to the big toe,
the tubes steadily gets smaller until Ollie goes into another capillary. He travels
down the capillary and notices other oxygen molecules are going from high to
low concentration, meaning they are leaving their blood cell and going into a
cell and feels himself going into the cell too. He diffuses into a nearby cell.
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Ollie moves into the mitochondria and is smashed with Sam, the sugar
molecule. A chemical reaction takes place. From this reaction comes Alex,
Alexander, Alexia, Alexandra, Alexandria, Abigail, Alec, Amanda, Augustus,
August, Arnold, Amy, Angela, Anna, Anne, Anthony, Antony, Andrew, Aidan,
Aristotle, Andrea, Adrina, Arthur, Abraham, Abe, Adam, Antonio, Angela,
Allen, Andre, Albert, Andy, Abram, Alfred, Alberto, Alberta, Abel, and Abby,
the 38 ATPs, Walter the water molecule, and Kelvin the carbon dioxide
molecule. Sam and Ollie no longer exist. Ollie has been transformed into
Kelvin.
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Kelvin the carbon dioxide molecule
diffuses out of the cell and into a red
blood cell. After a little while he flows into
a vein which will take him to the heart.
The veins get bigger and combine with
other veins until Kelvin was in the inferior
vena cava, a big vein that carries blood
from the lower half of the body into the
right atrium. He then flows into the right
atrium and is pumped out of right
ventricle, which pumps him into a gigantic
artery called pulmonary artery. Kelvin
traveling really fast because of high blood
pressure.
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The pulmonary artery takes him
to the lungs and branches off to
smaller veins. They keep
getting smaller and branching
off until they join capillaries.
Kelvin is carried into a capillary
and sees the alveoli, tiny,
grape-like sacs. Because of the
high concentration of carbon
dioxide, Kelvin diffuses into an
alveolus.
Once he is in the alveoli the person he is in exhales and he is forced out of
the alveoli and through the bronchioles and bronchi. He flies up the trachea
and larynx and tries to grab the epiglottis, but fails and continues moving
through the pharynx. He is carried, helplessly, out the throat and into the air.
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Kelvin lived happily ever after...
Until an unfortunate incident with a fern and he is
turned back into Ollie.
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