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For my project, I discuss about how oxygen, hydrogen, carbon, and nitrogen can react to the smoke of tobacco. Like most things humans consume, tobacco and its smoke has species of those four elements. These species negatively effect the human body, such as, the lungs, liver, and heart. The oxygen, hydrogen, carbon, and nitrogen in our body certainly does not react well to the tobacco smoke, therefore, they are trying to protect the human body from further damage. In my paper I describe how each element reacts and give an example or two about how each element prepares itself to fight the interaction with tobacco smoke. I did a creative short video that gives each element a character whose reactions would be perceived by the introduction of tobacco smoke in the human body.
Link to Video: https://media.uaf.edu/media/t/1_ab0aow2w
Link to Summary: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1l06Lm24HVrPxxycdJOVv7wNKyecZuKUe58wmXs7fd7Y/edit?usp=sharing
Abstract on Smoking Tobacco
For this project, tobacco’s effects on the four major elements in the body were discussed. The objective this project covered was most likely “Identify the four most abundant elements in the body”, with an expansion on how the introduction of tobacco alters the function of these elements. These elements are Nitrogen, Oxygen, Hydrogen, and Carbon, and each element goes “haywire” when tobacco is smoked. To depict this visually, Hoppough created a short video in which an individual smokes a cigarette. At first, the characters who represent the four elements are peaceful and casually doing various tasks, but after the smoker begins coughing they become agitated, showing their aggression with knives, baseball bats, and screams. This creative representation is effective in representing the chaos that occurs inside the body. Expanding on this chaos, Hoppough’s research shows that after inhaling tobacco smoke, “oxygen-derived free radicals” begin attacking carbon-carbon double bonds inside the lipids of internal organs. Carbon wreaks havoc in the body in the form of carbon monoxide, which limits the blood’s oxidative ability. Hydrogen in smoke is in the form of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAH), which dehydrate the body and can cause cancer. Finally, tobacco smoke causes certain “nitrogen species” that can damage certain cell vessel walls. Overall, while each of these elements plays an important role in the body, after the introduction of tobacco smoke they become perverse versions of themselves and begin to cause more damage than good.