The Human Body

The Human Body

by Alex Raynham

(Adapted book. Pre-Intermediate level)

Chapter 1 You are amazing

It’s a burning hot summer afternoon. As you run up the field, your heart and lungs arc working twice as hard as usual, and your blood is moving five times as fast. Your legs hurt, and you feel very, very tired, but you can’t stop now. Suddenly, the ball is coming towards you, turning in the air. Your eyes follow it while your brain does the thinking: Where will it be a moment later? How can I reach it? Where arc all the other players?

You jump: nerve signals shoot through your body, and hundreds of muscles in your legs, arms, back, and stomach move together to push you into the air. Ar just the right moment you push your neck forwards, and your head hits the ball. It flies into the goal at 60 kilometres per hour! As you run back down the field, six pairs of muscles move in your face, and you smile. You don’t feel tired any more. Your body wants you to forget the pain and feel good - so you can go on and win the game.

In the evening, you will be asleep, but your body will be hard at work. It will mend the damage that you did to your muscles in today’s match, and do a thousand other things to keep you alive. Your body will make new skin and new blood, your muscles and your hair will grow, and in the eight hours before you wake up, your heart will beat 33,000 times. In the morning, you may hurt all over, but you will be ready to start a new day.

Under your skin there is an extraordinary world full of tiny living things called cells - the smallest parts of any animal or plant. There are hundreds of different types of human cell, and everything in your body is made of them: from your eyes and your heart to your skin and your teeth. Your body is like an amazing machine, with 100 trillion living, working parts. But unlike machines, you can think and feel. So how docs your body work? How does it make you who you are? And what happens when things go wrong?

Chapter 2. Quick thinking

A few years ago, Stephen Wiltshire flew over New York City and looked down at the streets below. He didn’t take any photos, and he was in the air for only twenty minutes. But amazingly, Stephen remembered everything. For the next few days, he sat on a chair, listened to music, and drew for hours and hours. Stephen was making a 5.5-metre picture of Manhattan from the air - with hundreds of streets and thousands of buildings. Central Park, the Empire State Building, Brooklyn Bridge, the boats in the Hudson River - it’s all there in his picture, and everything is in the right place.