Lungs

Parts of the human lung: the right lung has three lobes and the left lung two. Air enters the lung through the windpipe and spreads into the bronchioles, and each bronchiole leads to a breathing unit made of alveolar sacs.

📖 In short

The lungs are two big spongy organs in your chest, protected by your ribs. You breathe with them: they take in fresh air with oxygen and let out air with carbon dioxide. You breathe thousands of times a day without thinking about it!

🤩 Did you know?

The lungs contain hundreds of millions of tiny air sacs.
The right lung is a little bigger than the left, because the heart takes up space on the left.
A child breathes faster than an adult.
The tiny hairs in your nose clean dust out of the air.

🔎 Find out more

🌟 Air's journey

Air comes in through your nose or mouth and goes down a tube called the windpipe, which splits into two tubes, then smaller and smaller tubes, like the branches of an upside-down tree.

🔍 Tiny sacs

At the ends of the small tubes are millions of tiny air sacs. There oxygen passes from the air into the blood, and carbon dioxide passes from the blood into the air to be breathed out.

💡 A muscle under the lungs

Under the lungs is a big muscle called the diaphragm. When it moves down, air comes in, and when it moves up, air goes out. Hiccups happen when this muscle suddenly tightens.

🎯 Healthy lungs

Fresh air and exercise make the lungs stronger, but smoke and smoking harm them a lot. So keep away from cigarette smoke.

🧩 Test yourself

1 What do the lungs take from the air?

2 What harms the lungs a lot?

3 Which picture shows “Lungs”?