March 15--Onion bagel oxyhemoglobin dissociation curve

[zyzyly]

It was an onion bagel sitting on top of an illustration of the oxyhemoglobin dissociation curve kind of day, as I ate an onion bagel and wondered how to make the oxyhemoglobin dissociation curve understandable to my students. I took a picture, but the bagel was as blurry as my understanding of how to teach the oxyhemoglobin dissociation curve.

In a nutshell, you can be deficient of oxygen and your body will compensate, up to a point. Once that point is reached, your body will decompensated rapidly.

Comments

[thoughtsbykat.livejournal.com]

I'm sure you figured it out how to present the information.

[gurdonark.livejournal.com]

Bagels are blurry but tasty things.

[neptunia67.livejournal.com]

I don't see a bagel. It must be very blurry.

[therealocelot.livejournal.com]

The onions represent oxygen. You remove the onions. the bagel is still an onion bagel because the remaining onions continue to provide adequate flavor... but at some point you remove enough onions and it's simply a plain old bagel.

Or something.

[randomdreams.livejournal.com]

I saw the physical representation of this done with stamps. There are four hemoglobin proteins, like a block of four stamps. The first protein to lose an oxygen takes a bit of energy, like ripping two edges of the stamp to get it loose. The next two take much less energy, like ripping only one edge, and the last one comes for free. That somewhat gets the idea of why the plot is sigmoidal.