How do we breathe?
Materials Required:
Disposable empty clear bottle (A water bottle or sports drink bottle)
Ruler
Two balloons
Utility knife (Used with adult supervision, make sure to always ask for help when using dangerous objects)
Scissors
Project Overview
Create your own lungs and learn how we breathe! Breathing is something we do naturally, let’s learn how it actually works! This project is meant for middle school or higher due to its difficulty. This project shows the respiratory system and the function of breathing in humans.
If you prefer a video or would like to follow along, here’s the link:
https://youtu.be/WJ06mrNliC0?si=MWPTdeE3kyApF1op
Instructions:
Ask an adult to cut the bottom half of the bottle, make sure to tell them to leave about ⅓ to ¾ of an inch of the bottom.
Place the cut bottle bottom on the table and lower a balloon into the bottle until only the balloon’s neck sticks out.
Fold the neck of the balloon over the top of the bottle, this represents your lungs.
Turn the bottle over and keep the balloon inside.
Ask an adult to cut around a third of another balloon.
Stretch the opening of the cut balloon over the wide opening of the bottle (the side that your adult cut open)
Pull the edges of the balloon as much as you can down the bottle, this allows the balloon surface to be flat. Make sure that the knot of the balloon is also on the outside and not the inside.
It’s ready, now, let’s see what our ribcage and lungs do to help us breathe!
Hold the bottle to the side to see what’s happening.
Pull on the knot, let the knot come back to its original position and then push it in gently.
Repeat this step multiple times.
Congratulations, you’ve created working lungs and learned how we breathe!
A fun fact for you, adults breathe 12 to 16 times PER minute while kids breathe even more than that! Can you imagine repeating this 16 times every minute?
